Two Partitions on 1TB HD. Makes sense?

[feurio]

I'd like to partition my third drive (1TB) into two 500 GB partitions -- for
convenience. Will this reduce the drive performance (having to deal with two
partitions instead of one)? Will the overall useful drive size decrease?

Thanks

 

[R. McCarty]

No and No.

 

[Bob I]

1. No
2. No

 

[smlunatick]

I'd like to partition my third drive (1TB) into two 500 GB partitions -- for
convenience. Will this reduce the drive performance (having to deal with two
partitions instead of one)? Will the overall useful drive size decrease?

Thanks

While creating smaller partition usually makes sense, it will not
improve the performance. Most standard hard drive used in XP will
require all reads / writes to be stopped before do the other
"function." The performance will be decrease slightly if two
partitions are on the drive.

For a better solution, it is important to know what type of usage you
will be doing. Sample for this is photo / video editing. Usually you
will need more that one hard drive which one hard drive will be used
as "scratch" work area.

 

[JS]

No loss in drive performance.
In general the first 25% of the drive has the best performance.
The second 25% has a slight loss in transfer rates.
The last 25% of the drive has the most noticeable drop of in speed.

Useful drive size will not decrease.

 

[Big_Al]

feurio said this on 5/1/2009 11:13 AM:

I'd like to partition my third drive (1TB) into two 500 GB partitions -- for
convenience. Will this reduce the drive performance (having to deal with two
partitions instead of one)? Will the overall useful drive size decrease?

Thanks

The easy test is to format it as 1TB. Check the final HD size available.
Delete the partition and partition into two and format each, then add
the total of both partitions.

I kinda think two partitions might lose some space over one. But
that's REALLY a guess. Still I'd be curious to know. I still doubt
you'd lose any significant space though. I'd go with what you need or
want, rather than worrying about a meg of space here and there. You
got a TB!

 

[R. McCarty]

Actually having multiple partitions on a single physical drive does take
more space than a single partition. Each has Metadata ($MFT content)
on each individual partition.

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

Actually having multiple partitions on a single physical drive does take
more space than a single partition. Each has Metadata ($MFT content)
on each individual partition.

It also makes formatting quicker. I would go for four partitions because of
that..

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I'd like to partition my third drive (1TB) into two 500 GB partitions -- for
convenience.

Convenience in what respect? Why do you think that's more convenient
or better? It may be better for some people, but not for everyone. And
especially if you already have two other drives, there is likely to be
no good reason to do what you suggest.

Will this reduce the drive performance (having to deal with two
partitions instead of one)?

Yes, because it will result in files on the second partition being
farther from those on the first, thereby increasing head movement time
from one to the other.

However, that loss in performance is likely to be slight that you will
never notice it.

Will the overall useful drive size decrease?

Yes, because there is some space overhead associated with each
partition.

However, that loss in size is tiny, and can readily be ignored
completely.

A couple of others here have answered "No" and "No" to your two
questions. Although there are not literally correct with either
answer, they are close enough to being correct that you can accept
what they tell you.

 

[JS]

Follow up on Ken's post.

No need to create system restore points.
So turn this feature off for your 3rd drive or you will
lose noticeable disk space even if you only create one partition.