Best partitions for app and library?

[gjm]

i hate arguing stupid stuff on the internet, this is why i haven't been back to make a point.

this is a myth, sure you can read it in books, but it simply isn't true.
if you want to see a performance increase you need to use two harddrives.
dealing with data ends up being my line of work, so i really am speaking from experience

To some this is not stupid...as we are not as informed as others are. I/we value hearing from people like yourself, who through your daily professional experience can cast a different light on subjects like these. You clearly have a point of view that I am very interested in. It would be great if you could outline this a bit more clearly rather than saying it "just isn't true." There is a time vs money issue here, for me at least and finally knowing the truth would be great. A clearly outlined use of multiple hard drives vs partitions would make my day

If you don't want to reply to the thread you could enlightn me via pm, that would at least save my public humiliation for my lack of computor savy . I just want to get it right, set it and forget it. Thanks.

[doc holiday]

there's nothing wrong with partisans, they are great for organization.
just don't expect a performance gain.

if you have two drives, and run your system off of one and keep your data on another, you will see performance gains.

[gjm]

This is a very helpful article on partitioning
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may05/a ... sician.htm
@doc holiday: I (and this article) backup Tarekith's point re the outermost partition, you may have been mislead on the subject.

@ misteron: After reading this article did you still go ahead with one monster partition?

[misteron]

A clearly outlined use of multiple hard drives vs partitions would make my day

First of all this isn't that complicated so don't worry, you'll get to the bottom of what's best for you quick enough.

If you decide to go for a 2nd drive, (unless u get a 4200rpm drive and connect it to a 1.1port) u will most likely enjoy a performance boost.
However u will also see a performance boost by sensibly partitioning your drive.

Both cases are true, unless you somehow do it really backwards, as mentioned above.
But don't take my word for it yet - the measurement tools are all out there for free download. They are more than likely linked to in that SOS article.

They are easy to use and understand and their function is to measure the various stats, speeds, etc of your different partitions.
The tests will clearly show higher speeds on your outermost partitions.
The larger the capacity of the drive, the more the performance falls on the way to the centre.

@doc
As you haven't presented any information to contradict the well documented info that everyone else seems to base their successful partitioning on, including me and Martin Walker, I can't recommend or do any differnetly than what I know works.
However, if you have information I don't have i would love to have it... that is what we are here for, and I am very open to being taught something completely new.

[misteron]

This is a very helpful article on partitioning
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/may05/a ... sician.htm
@doc holiday: I (and this article) backup Tarekith's point re the outermost partition, you may have been mislead on the subject.

@ misteron: After reading this article did you still go ahead with one monster partition?

No. In my desktop I have 3 drives split up a few ways according to all the info in the article.
In my laptop I have my boot drive with only XP and Live
Next partition is a small one for current project.
next is Live's library and EIC.
The reasons for this are:
-my lappy drive is small enought to not warrant the hassle sometimes incyrred by not havin the OS on first partition.
-I use "collect all and save" to get any library samples to my current project partition, which cuts out the majority of movement for the reading head

This might not be exactly right for you but if u get the logic that goes with partitioning you can easilt decide for yourself the best config.

[gjm]

A clearly outlined use of multiple hard drives vs partitions would make my day

First of all this isn't that complicated so don't worry, you'll get to the bottom of what's best for you quick enough.

If you decide to go for a 2nd drive, (unless u get a 4200rpm drive and connect it to a 1.1port) u will most likely enjoy a performance boost.
However u will also see a performance boost by sensibly partitioning your drive.

Both cases are true, unless you somehow do it really backwards, as mentioned above.
But don't take my word for it yet - the measurement tools are all out there for free download. They are more than likely linked to in that SOS article.

They are easy to use and understand and their function is to measure the various stats, speeds, etc of your different partitions.
The tests will clearly show higher speeds on your outermost partitions.
The larger the capacity of the drive, the more the performance falls on the way to the centre.

@doc
As you haven't presented any information to contradict the well documented info that everyone else seems to base their successful partitioning on, including me and Martin Walker, I can't recommend or do any differnetly than what I know works.
However, if you have information I don't have i would love to have it... that is what we are here for, and I am very open to being taught something completely new.

I am so confused

After reading this thread there seems to be essentially two view points summarised by Tarekith and doc holiday. I read the article linked by misteron and fell completely for the logic presented. I then phoned two computer Tech's locally and described the claims while asking for a price on Partition Magic and I found, interestingly enough, two different opinions, Tarekiths AND doc holidays.

I fall into the camp of the older laptop XPsp2 with 5400rpm HD. I have been frantically trying to find the reference in the Manual suggesting the use of a second HD for Live's library. In another thread I started I tried to track down the source of my HD overload indicator with 3-4 stock library clips. My library is stored on an EXT HD 7200rpm via FW400 (TI chipset). Tarekiths suggestion, backed up by the SOS article for a front end mini partition on the system HD for current projects made sense to me and was a possible solution to consider.... until I tried to get a second opinion. (the one tech said it was "audio geekry all for 1% performance and that it was not worth the hassle to install Partition Magic for the extra possible problems)

I just need to hear some equally intelligent logic from the naysayers.

[doc holiday]

this is 2 seconds on google

just stuff to read

http://forum.notebookreview.com/archive ... 25863.html

http://tiny.cc/GormJ

[gjm]

http://forum.notebookreview.com/archive ... 25863.html

Veeerrrry interesting........ Just visited with an aquaintence (tech No. 3) who owns and manages a computor leasing company with nearly 300 commercial clients. I quized him on this subject and I was surprised to hear that he also thought that the whole partitioning thing from a performance point of view was extreme in the least for very small returns. From an organizational point of view there are gains, certainly, but he was very doubtful about remotely decent performance enhancement. (Note none of the techs I spoke to are into audio).

In my particular situation, some partitioning for 'big picture' management seems like a good idea (as noted in the above link) for when 'shit happens.' I am however keen to find and use some measurement tools for performance. There are some mentioned in the SOS article as posted by misteron. If anyone reads the article and can add to these I would appreciate it.

Most people seem to agree that if you have 2 HD's, say in a desk top then some partitioning stratergies with performance gains in mind have merit, but in the instance of only one HD as in my case inside my laptop with XP, then organization seems to be a better reason... in theory.

Meanwhile we all press on.

[doc holiday]

another thing about keeping your data all in one place is that this will make it easier to transfer things to a different computer.

[longjohns]

For people considering using PM, etc to move _existing_ data around and creating partitions on already-used HD's

remember that every time you use PM there is a certain risk of losing data. You'll just click 'ignore' on all those warnings about creating rescue floppies...

It probably won't happen - but it did to me once! And one time of losing your data is enough to make you think...

[misteron]

It probably won't happen - but it did to me once! And one time of losing your data is enough to make you think...

+1, which is why I use Paragon now

[fishmonkey]

i haven't personally done any tests, as i don't currently have a hard drive bandwidth problem (and if things ever got to that stage i'd get faster drives), but i think the crucial point is that how you are using your computer, and the pattern of HD access by your system and applications is absolutely critical to whether you will see any performance gains by partitioning alone...

i.e. gains would only be possible if you are performing tasks where a "faster" partition was being accessed for a sustained period of time... so when working with multitrack audio and/or video (assuming your system is set up right, no system processes accessing the drive in the background, plenty of RAM, low fragmentation, etc.) it might be worth the effort if you are desperate for a little more HD headroom... and your system would have to be painstakingly setup by a pro to achieve anywhere near the theoretical maximum transfer gain from the more-sectors-passing-under-head effect...

however, for a lot of tasks, and for general purpose computing, any gains would be most likely negligible...