Hard Drive Noise after Clean Install (Partitioned Now)

[davidspalding]

Back in the NT, and 2000 I think, day, Windows ran a bit smoother if you had system files, data files, and "logging" files on separate physical hard drives. You could split your pagefiles this way, across drives, and gain some performance. (I believe there was a practice that recommended they all be equal size. Not 64MB on c:\, and 756MB on d:\.)

Now, in 1998, I put two pagefiles, each on partitions on separate hard drives (D0 and D1), and things ran well for NT. I further started testing with putting the TEMP variables and some other churn stuff on a H:\ partition on D1, and it helped.

Now, in 2005, on my single TP hard drive, I have c:\ for system and core (system) apps, p:\ for programs, U:\ for user profiles, and L:\ for my own files. TEMP and TMP variables are also pointed to U:\Temp\. Though its all on the same HDD, fragmentation is minimized considerably on the P: program partition, and nearly as well on C:. This way, "churn" on my system drive is at a minimum. Does it make a system run faster? In comparison with my work T41 (all on c:\), yes. YMMV. It also means I have to defrag C:\ less. Pagefiles and Hibernation files are usually only broken into no more than 2 pieces.

I can't offer corroboration for these ideas, but can confirm a) they work, and b) they suit me well enough that I configured my T43 this way within a week of First Contact.

[serpico]

<snip> Now, in 2005, on my single TP hard drive, I have c:\ for system and core (system) apps, p:\ for programs, U:\ for user profiles, and L:\ for my own files. TEMP and TMP variables are also pointed to U:\Temp\. Though its all on the same HDD, fragmentation is minimized considerably on the P: program partition, and nearly as well on C:. This way, "churn" on my system drive is at a minimum. Does it make a system run faster? In comparison with my work T41 (all on c:\), yes. YMMV. It also means I have to defrag C:\ less. Pagefiles and Hibernation files are usually only broken into no more than 2 pieces.
<snip>

Why bother separating programs from the OS? Assuming these are not self-contained apps, they would need to be reinstalled following a format of your OS partition. Maybe there's a marginal speed benefit to your OS by having it exclusively occupy the outermost tracks, but the tradeoff is wasted disk space by having 2 partitions (OS and programs) instead of 1.

My view is 2 partitions in total for a one-disk system: 1st for OS, apps, pagefile. 2nd for user data - in addition to usual documents, spreadsheets, mp3s, etc., I would also keep outlook.pst, temporary internet files, My Documents folder, handheld device backups, etc. Theme here is to (1) keep all the data and easily fragged files separate from OS and apps, and (2) minimize the number of partitions because they waste disk space. Of course, you can always use non-destructive partitioning software like PartitionMagic, but I would prefer to minimize the risk that is inherent in resizing partitions containing data.

Partitioning is like politics. Everyone has a different view.

[davidspalding]

Good point, I suppose I keep programs separate because my *last* system was a 1998 Dell with a whopping 6 GB on the primary drive. I configured it for dual boot Win98/2000, and decided to leave huge apps like Corel, Adobe, Microsoft, MacroMedia on my additional 8 GB secondary drive, where I had room for all the extras. IOW, habit.

Disk churn on an Outlook .PST file is horrendous, but basically I keep my files outside of the "profiles" so that any data danger from high-churn profile activity (the dfrg.msc window on U: after a month has lots of red) doesn't endanger files. To each his own. I've experienced data lost/corruption once or twice, so the seemingly "silly" steps provide a level of comfort that not everyone needs.

Yeah, I use Partition Magic. Wasn't aware it did it any "better" than, say, FDISK, but I like the extras it provides.

[serpico]

<snip>
Yeah, I use Partition Magic. Wasn't aware it did it any "better" than, say, FDISK, but I like the extras it provides.

PM lets you resize partitions without deleting data. Fdisk, on the other hand, is "destructive" in that it deletes all the data. So PM lets you change partitions "on the fly".

[davidspalding]

Yes, I've used that without incident.

[Trip]

I just partitioned my hard drive after doing a full reinstall so I would have a seperate partition for Linux, and I've noticed that my hard drive is making a clicking noise as well, and I'm pretty sure it didn't do that before. At least, not as often. The drive isn't failing any S.M.A.R.T. flags, though, so there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it...

The debate over whether partitioning is effective aside, are there any thoughts as to why this would happen?