Logical and Physical disk drives

[Alain Dekker]

Logical disks:

Does it help to partition your 40 Gb C:\ into two 20 Gb partitions (C:\ and
D:\)? If I had an application that only wrote to D:\ (and lets say, for
arguments sake, that the app writes frequently to disk), would the partition
help reduce the likelihood of OS corruption? Would it reduce disk
fragmentation?

Physical disks:

On a related note, does having two physical drives help with the above?
Presumably with file fragmentation it would, but what about helping with OS
corruption?

Thanks,
Alain

 

[Shenan Stanley]

Logical disks:

Does it help to partition your 40 Gb C:\ into two 20 Gb partitions
(C:\ and D:\)? If I had an application that only wrote to D:\ (and
lets say, for arguments sake, that the app writes frequently to
disk), would the partition help reduce the likelihood of OS
corruption? Would it reduce disk fragmentation?

Physical disks:

On a related note, does having two physical drives help with the
above? Presumably with file fragmentation it would, but what about
helping with OS corruption?

If your OS becomes corrupt because of frequent disk writes - you need a
different application than the one that is abusing your system - as it is
badly written.

Think about this simply.

If you have one physical disk - no matter how you partition it - all the
data travels through the same cable.

And you are speaking of - in relative terms - some small disks. If I had a
40GB drive - I would make it my OS and programs drive (maybe partitioned -
probably not considering its size) and all my data would be on a seperate
(physical) hard disk drive.

 

[Big_Al]

If your OS becomes corrupt because of frequent disk writes - you need a
different application than the one that is abusing your system - as it is
badly written.

Think about this simply.

If you have one physical disk - no matter how you partition it - all the
data travels through the same cable.

And you are speaking of - in relative terms - some small disks. If I had a
40GB drive - I would make it my OS and programs drive (maybe partitioned -
probably not considering its size) and all my data would be on a seperate
(physical) hard disk drive.

And a benefit of 2 drives is the heads can seek independent of each
other thus making your system more efficient.

 

[JS]

Two physical drives is the better option.
You should get a slight speed improvement by:
1) Placing the pagefile on the second drive.
2) Installing the applications and saving data files on the second drive.

This first and I presume smaller of the two drives would then have only
Windows installed on it.

JS

 

[Alain Dekker]

Thanks for the answers, about what I suspected with some useful additional
information.

Thanks,
Alain

 

[JS]

You might want to read this:
How to configure paging files for optimization and recovery in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314482/en-us

Make note of the dump file limitations with a single page file.
That said, I have a single page file located on a second drive
(first partition of the second drive) and it is a fixed size.
Because I the pagefile located on it's own dedicated partition
there is no fragmentation.

How to move the paging file in Windows XP:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307886/

JS

 

[Anna]

Thanks for the answers, about what I suspected with some useful additional
information.

Thanks,
Alain

Alain:
Let me offer you a contrary view...
1. There is virtually nothing to be gained either in performance or security
by multi-partitioning your 40 GB HDD so that one partition contains your
operating system and the other your programs and/or user-created data.

2. You do *not* need two "physical drives" to achieve better performance
and/or security because of "placing the pagefile on the second drive" and
"installing applications/data files" on that drive. You will *not* gain a
"slight speed improv(e)ment" of any consequence by doing so.

3. And your system will *not* be made more efficient because there's "a
benefit of 2 drives (because) the heads can seek independent of each other"
as another responder to your query has indicated. There is simply no
"real-world" benefit to this, period.

Allow me to suggest, Alain, that what you *should* be considering is
establishing & maintaining a comprehensive backup system, e.g., a
disk-cloning or disk-imaging program and use that program on a routine
systematic basis to "clone" (or disk-image) the contents of your *single* 40
GB HDD which contains your OS, your programs & applications, and your
user-created data. You can organize your programs and user-created data
through folders and not suffer any loss of efficiency in doing so. To that
end you could install another HDD to serve as the recipient of the clone or
disk-image.
Anna

 

[Bill in Co.]

Logical disks:

Does it help to partition your 40 Gb C:\ into two 20 Gb partitions (C:\
and
D:\)? If I had an application that only wrote to D:\ (and lets say, for
arguments sake, that the app writes frequently to disk), would the
partition
help reduce the likelihood of OS corruption?
No.

Would it reduce disk fragmentation?

Only if the specific partition were being used less, but it's no big deal.

Physical disks:

On a related note, does having two physical drives help with the above?
Presumably with file fragmentation it would, but what about helping with
OS
corruption?

No.

 

[Lil' Dave]

The only time what you're saying is faster than the default location of the
swapfile, is when, in addition to what you've noted, the bus the second hard
drive is located on can be simultaneously accessed when the first hard drive
is accessed. To my knowledge, this only exists for true scsi systems, not
pseudo scsi...ide or otherwise sorta but not really scsi in windows. The OP
is obviously speaking of ide only.

--
Dave

Bailout: Friend, relative, business acquaintance
paying a sum to get the accused
out of jail until court is ready to proceed.

Bailout: U.S. taxpayers paying a sum of
money for some critical business failure
that was fleecing the taxpayer to begin
with.
Somehow, the word "bailout" seems
very different.

 

[JS]

You haven't factored in drive overhead or pagefile fragmentation.

The slowest thing in the CPU food chain is the hard drive,
better to have two servants, one to take away the empty plates and
the other to serve the next even if they must use the same hallway.

JS

 

[Lil' Dave]

Like your two step dance. Thing is, only one, count em', one, ide port can
be addressed at any one time. Only one hard drive on that ide port can be
addressed at any one time. What you're referring to is a factor in the
equation, IF, both ide hard drives can be addressed at the same/simultaneous
time for read or write. Otherwise, its just snake oil as nothing is done
any faster.

Mind you, I do like having the swapfile on another hard drive to minimize
total file fragmentation on the XP hard drive. Its a real good idea if you
have an inadequate size hard drive for XP to function and breathe. Am not
discounting that.

The big factor, the app the OP is talking about, and how much in terms of
filesize(s) it writes frequently, was conveniently left out of the equation.
I know that some raw video to DVD programs, in essence, have their own
swapfile of sorts during the conversion process for instance. This process
occurs during the entire conversion process, and in filesize, is less than,
equivalent to, or more than a DVD may hold in terms of filesizes total. In
that case, the app writing to another physical hard drive, instead of
fighting the windows swapfile for XP partition use time, is appropriate.
The swapfile, in that case, is more cordial sharing cpu time when writing.

--
Dave

Bailout: Friend, relative, business acquaintance
paying a sum to get the accused
out of jail until court is ready to proceed.

Bailout: U.S. taxpayers paying a sum of
money for some critical business failure
that was fleecing the taxpayer to begin
with.
Somehow, the word "bailout" seems
very different.

 

[JS]

Just keep in mind that the drive head can't be in two areas of the drive at
the same time.
In any case this issue is worth investigating in detail for a future article
I plan to write.

JS

 

[RJK]

I beg to differ ....slightly !!
....though, VERY GOOD point about backups - backup policy

Various aspects of micro performance, across the board, are significantly
improved by configuring a minimal, (currently recc. by MS - 128mb), XP Home
boot drive swap file, and the BIG 1.5 x RAM pagefile.sys on 1st partition of
a 2nd hd.
Further reduce boot drive fragmentation by relocating TIF, tmp and temp
variables/directories, OE address book, and anything else that grows in size
and wants to move around on the boot drive !! onto 2nd or 3rd hd's, ...sling
all application user created files onto 2nd or 3rd hd, and application temp
variables/dirs. ....or did I say that already ? ! ....if you can find
them !!!

I've never been keen on installing apps. anywhere other than onto the boot
drive but, MOST machines I've worked on are crying out for a 2nd and,
ideally, a 3rd hd, and time spent rearranging things as mentioned above !!
....
regards, Richard

 

[Miske]

To simplify...
It could be useful to have two partitions: First system and
applications, second for personal data (MyDoc), and maybe swap, temp,
OE files and so. In (rare) case of reinstalling OS (clean install),
your data will be saved. Buying another HD... do You really need it
for your work. Real gain in performance would be to set RAID. And if
thy are PATA drives (witch 40GB is) it is good for them to be on
separate IDE cables.