What's fastest: the OS on a short-stroked 320GB 5.4K rpm HDD or on a 2TB 7.2K rpm half full HDD?

[Rafael Mestdag]

I've got currently 2 HDD's one is a short-stroked 5,400 rpm 320GB with only Win7 installed and the other is my storage HDD which is a half-full 7,200 rpm 2TB.

If I install Win7 on the 2TB HDD as it is now will the OS and it's programs operate faster? Should I make a separate partition for the OS?

 

[bjornl]

the 7200rpm 2tb disk is faster. Speed does not decrease with how full it is.
Installing the OS on the faster drive will improve performance, but it won't be night and day. If you can save up for a dirt cheap SSD.

 

[Rafael Mestdag]

the 7200rpm 2tb disk is faster. Speed does not decrease with how full it is.

But all my most used files are on it, mostly videos and games. So, if I install Win7 on it, will it be faster in general? And should I make a separate partition for the OS?

 

[bjornl]

the 7200rpm 2tb disk is faster. Speed does not decrease with how full it is.

But all my most used files are on it, mostly videos and games. So, if I install Win7 on it, will it be faster in general? And should I make a separate partition for the OS?

A parition does not speed up or slow down anything.
Your files on your larger drive will not be faster. They might seem faster if you used VLC to view videos and it was installed on your smaller drive.

 

[TJ Hooker]

@Rafael Mestdag did you use an actual short stroke tool to short stroke your HDD? Or did you just make a partition in Windows that's smaller than the total drive size, and/or keep the drive mostly empty?

 

[USAFRet]

You're back on the short stroking kick?
I thought you had finally come to the realization that it is a waste of space for little real benefit.

That actual answer to your question, in the Year 2017, is an SSD.

 

[cryoburner]

Speed does not decrease with how full it is.

A parition does not speed up or slow down anything.

Actually, that's not entirely true. The sectors near the very start of a disk will be significantly faster than those near the very end of the disk. Up to almost twice as fast in terms of sequential speeds. One thing partitions can do is ensure that all the files in that partition will remain within a certain area of the disk. So you might dedicate a 64GB partition to the OS and applications at the very start of the disk, for example, to ensure that all operating system files remain within the fastest part of the drive, have a second larger partition for games in the middle, and maybe dedicate a partition near the end of the disk to bulk storage, where performance won't be as important. Another thing this will do is reduce the movement of the read-write head, since all the operating system files will be closer together, resulting in faster access times when the disk is jumping between them.

In this case though, the 320GB 5400RPM drive is going to be a fair amount slower than the modern 7200RPM disk. So, using some partition management software to add an OS partition to the start of the newer disk, and installing the operating system there could potentially help performance. On the other hand, since everything will be on the same drive, the drive's head may need to jump back and forth between partitions when loading up a game, for example, possibly increasing some access times compared to the current setup where each partition is on its own drive and has its own read write head. Also, moving files between two partitions on the same drive will tend to be slower, since the head needs to jump back and forth between the read and write locations.

I fully agree on the suggestion for an SSD though, if you can afford to add one to the system. Even if it's a lower-capacity SSD for just the OS, applications, and maybe a few of your most-played games, it should perform a lot better than any mechanical drive.

 

[USAFRet]

Speed does not decrease with how full it is.

A parition does not speed up or slow down anything.

Actually, that's not entirely true. The sectors near the very start of a disk will be significantly faster than those near the very end of the disk. Up to almost twice as fast in terms of sequential speeds. One thing partitions can do is ensure that all the files in that partition will remain within a certain area of the disk. So you might dedicate a 64GB partition to the OS and applications at the very start of the disk, for example, to ensure that all operating system files remain within the fastest part of the drive, have a second larger partition for games in the middle, and maybe dedicate a partition near the end of the disk to bulk storage, where performance won't be as important. Another thing this will do is reduce the movement of the read-write head, since all the operating system files will be closer together, resulting in faster access times when the disk is jumping between them.

In this case though, the 320GB 5400RPM drive is going to be a fair amount slower than the modern 7200RPM disk. So, using some partition management software to add an OS partition to the start of the newer disk, and installing the operating system there could potentially help performance. On the other hand, since everything will be on the same drive, the drive's head may need to jump back and forth between partitions when loading up a game, for example, possibly increasing some access times compared to the current setup where each partition is on its own drive and has its own read write head. Also, moving files between two partitions on the same drive will tend to be slower, since the head needs to jump back and forth between the read and write locations.

I fully agree on the suggestion for an SSD though, if you can afford to add one to the system. Even if it's a lower-capacity SSD for just the OS, applications, and maybe a few of your most-played games, it should perform a lot better than any mechanical drive.

Yes, using the outer portion of the drive is faster.
But it incurs such a maintenance overhead as to make it useless.

A 64GB partition for the OS and applications is a fast way to a headache when it runs out of space.
And since the OS and applications also use "files" that will exist on other parts of the drive...where is the speed benefit?
You're still talking to the whole drive.

Unless one wants to use only that outer portion and no other space on that drive...
In which case you have tossed away perfectly good drive space, for little gain that transfers to your eyes and fingers.

I'd love to see a blind user test between 3 systems...
Otherwise identical except for drive config.
1. A regular use system, OS, applications, and files wherever they go.
2. A shortstroked drive, with the 'files' in a different partition on the slower part of the drive.
3. An SSD.

I'd put good money that the first two are indistinguishable in actual use.

 

[cryoburner]

A 64GB partition for the OS and applications is a fast way to a headache when it runs out of space.
And since the OS and applications also use "files" that will exist on other parts of the drive...where is the speed benefit?
You're still talking to the whole drive.

The 64GB was just an example, and you could of course make that 100GB or more. And if you ever do run low on space for a particular partition, there is free software available that allows partitions to be resized without losing data. It might take some hours for a larger partition to get moved, but it's a simple process, and I've never encountered problems with it.

Either way, the OS, applications, and configuration files would all remain within the first 10% or so of a modern hard disk. That is bound to be much better for seek times than having those things scattered across the entire drive, especially once it starts getting relatively full, and most remaining free space is located within the slowest part of the drive. Imagine a browser having to frequently access numerous cache and session files across a drive, and you should be able to see how ensuring that those files remain near one another can make a difference. Limiting frequently written files to a smaller partition like this also prevents them from fragmenting files on other partitions, and allows you to prioritize defragmenting the things that you need defragmented, and not your hundreds of gigabytes of bulk files. You can also turn off Windows features like indexing and system restore for those other partitions, so that Windows isn't wasting performance cataloging things when it's not needed, which can also help keep the drive heads within the OS partition most of the time.

And while there will still be higher access times when you need to access files on more distant parts of the disk, you would get that with a single partition as well. Typically bulk data files at the end of the disk won't be getting constantly accessed on a regular basis anyway, so you are less likely to run into situations where an application is causing the drive to constantly thrash its heads back and forth across the entire disk. The point isn't to eliminate long seeks entirely, just to greatly reduce their frequency.

Unless one wants to use only that outer portion and no other space on that drive...
In which case you have tossed away perfectly good drive space, for little gain that transfers to your eyes and fingers.

I've always consider that to be kind of silly. There's no real reason not to use the extra space. At the very least, simply add a partition for files like backups that aren't going to be accessed frequently, and in practice performance should be pretty much identical to a "short-stroked" drive that leaves the space unallocated.

Of course, as you already pointed out, if someone is looking for optimal performance today, using an SSD for the OS, applications and other frequently accessed files is the way to go. Still, partitioning hard disks can be useful, since many people have game libraries that won't fit on their SSD, and will often place them on a mechanical drive alongside bulk data files. If you dedicate the first half of such a drive to your games, for example, you can ensure that they will all be located on a part of the drive with above-average performance. On a drive that's relatively full, it will also reduce the maximum possible distance that a game's files could be separated by, so that when a game is updated, you don't end up with it jumping back and forth between the very beginning and end of the drive, which could potentially increase load times in some cases. And of course, there are plenty of people who build systems on a budget, who would rather put the money into a better graphics card or something than an SSD. We're not quite to the point where it makes sense to have an SSD in every budget system. Even if these people won't have the performance of an SSD, they might still want to make sure they're getting the most out of their mechanical drive.

 

[Rafael Mestdag]

Ok, I simply created a secondary partition on the 2TB drive and installed Windows on it, it's a lot faster now than the previous setup with the 320GB drive. I had previously tested both drives using Crystal Disk Mark and the Sequential Reads were almost 3 times faster on the 7200rpm 2TB drive, I guess that explains the extra speed.

 

[USAFRet]

Ok, I simply created a secondary partition on the 2TB drive and installed Windows on it, it's a lot faster now than the previous setup with the 320GB drive.

Its faster for 2 reasons.
1. The 7200 RPM drive
2. Its a new install, without a lot of built up gunk.

 

[cryoburner]

Its faster for 2 reasons.
1. The 7200 RPM drive
2. Its a new install, without a lot of built up gunk.

And at least one other reason being that the 2TB drive likely has higher platter density. It may use two 1TB platters, where the lower capacity drive probably has either a single 320GB platter, or two 160GB platters depending on how old it is. higher capacity platters should contain more data per track, so more data can be read with each rotation.