WD Caviar black - partitioning drive for optimal gaming!

Hi, i have finally got round to buying the 1TB caviar black.. Could do with some advice please!

I currently have a raptor 150(which is loud and really not that quick?, it is 5 years old tho!) a 200gb wd backup drive for storage and ive got the caviar coming because 150gb is nowhere near enough these days!

Ive read that it would be best to partition my caviar black.. So i would have 200gb for steam, then 200gb for os, rest for data etc.. I believe this was is quicker for gaming? I may be wrong this is why i'm requiring some advice please, and also what to use my raptor 150 drive for.. If anything? I know its meant to be a really good drive or was in its day but its slow and always seems to be churning away when on games, likes its going mental! Loud enough to annoy the missus when watching tele in the bedroom!

Any advice regarding this is appreciated! Thankyou

 

Partitioning the same drive is a waste of time and gives zero performance increase.

Only do it if you are a neat freak and need separation of data because of OCD.

Its barely useful for even separating programs for OS, because half the time, they need reinstallation once the registry is wiped from a clean OS install.

 

Partitioning actually does make a huge difference, while drives have changed a great deal over the past decade, the fundamentals remain the same. The only exception is SSD drives.

The primary fundamental is that when you install an OS & programs they are written to the inner tracks of a HDs disc, which is the fastest part of the disc (think of an LP record). By partitioning your HD into more than one partition you have just placed the C: partition on the inner tracks & the other partition or partitions further out from the inner tracks.

For optimal gaming have only 1 internal HD, unless running a RAID array. I suspect the other drives you mentioned will or are attached externally via USB, Firewire so on.

Yes Partitioning will result in increased performance but it greatly depends on how you partition the drive & how you also store non-operating system & program files. Ideally you would only have your OS & programs on your C: drive. Any pictures, documents, downloads, movies & music should all be saved to either a second D: partition or an external HD.

Your 150GB Raptor is ideal for gaming & is much faster than the WD Black, the Raptors age doesn't matter. I use the WD Black for my external drive, & both WD Black & WD SE for external storage, Raptors are to expensive for me.

It sounds like you have the Raptor setup as a single partition & have filled it with junk (pictures, documents, movies & music) which will lower your gaming performance.

What I would do is move all the junk off your Raptor & onto your 200GB backup drive or the new WD Black. Then do a really good cleanup of the Raptor drive, deleting files & folders you don't need, uninstall any programs you don't use, clean out the various temp file folders & then do a defrag.

You don't need 150GB or 200GB or even 1TB for an OS drive, that is over kill even today. I typically partition my drives so C: drive is 40GB to 50GB in size. But since you want to game you likely could use more, closer to 75GB to 100GB, games do take up a great deal of space.

If you want to resize the Raptor & make two partitions on it you can use GParted but only after you have cleaned up the drive & defraged it.

You should also set your pagefile to a fixed size of 2048MB or 4096MB, provided you are using the default 4kb cluster size on the Raptor.

The Raptor is a loud drive, the slowness is likely do to all the junk files you have stored on it. If you follow my suggestions you should notice an improvement. There are others things you can do such as stopping starting programs & services but that involves more work & what I have suggested is fairly easy to start with. For example when you open task manager how many processes are running? Attached is mine for reference.

 

No it doesn't, but I invite you to show some benchmarks to convince me otherwise

Before and after, please.

When I say benchmarks, I mean real world noticing performance. Burst benchmarks on HDDs that changes between every test anyway does not count.

I think for purposes here, lets see boot times, shutdown times, game FPS increases, game launch differences.

You will likely need to use a video.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/255224/how_to_partition_your_hard_drive_to_optimize_performance.html

Every single one of these benchmarks changes from each test to the next. They are not static figures and running them multiple times will give you results for and against partitioning just because they will always vary. There is not enough discrepancy between the scores to come to any true conclusion.

It is placebo, plain and simple.

 

This is what a tangible difference looks like (and can be felt and measured):

Before:


After:

 

Benchmarking is of little value beyond providing a very general picture. All benchmarking suffers from the same natural declining curve phenomena. It doesn't matter what you benchmark, how many times you benchmark, you always have the declining curve phenomena. The results as you noted are always different, that is a consequence of the natural declining curve phenomena & the fact no PC is ever in the exact same state twice.

I stopped playing with benchmarking software over a decade ago because benchmarking software are essentially useless for anything beyond getting a one time general picture.

You are free to believe whatever you like regarding partitioning & system performance. Nothing I can say will sway you as your belief that "partitioning doesn't matter" is already deeply rooted in your mind & nobody but you can change that belief. I am certainly not about to waste my time trying, been there done that.

 

This turned out like I expected. Wild claims, no substance to them.

 

Someone asked a question I provided my help as I have done since before even the Tweakfiles days. I was a forum member here way back then & several times since, I think this is about 4th or 5th time on MG all told.

I could explain hard drive architecture to you but you will believe what you want, not what is fact. So I'll leave you with a couple links, you can choose to learn or remain dogmatic. As I stated the fundamentals of hard drives have not changed in over 20 years.

http://partition.radified.com/partitioning_2.htm
http://gparted.org/why-partition.php

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/index.htm

If you get lost use the link below, the hard drive section is rather large. It's also the most complete & accurate hard drive guide in existence on the Internet. It's not really updated much today, it doesn't need to be since as I said the fundamentals have not changed.

http://www.pcguide.com/topic.html

 

First of all, I didn't ask for your credentials, but in comparison I've been here since the beginning, since the beginning of tweakfiles, and before that, 3dfiles. This explains a lot though. A lot of tweafilers were consumed by tweaks that might yield a 1% difference, and felt that was a noticeable change. In that you have been here 4 or 5 times on MG and only have an account now, tells me that either you just lurk, not helping anyone, or have multiple accounts, which we do not allow. Typically multiple account users are previously banned ones. Probably not a wise thing to announce to moderators.

Second, the fundamentals in hard drives might not have changed much, but the OSes that use them HAVE. Windows caches frequently used applications, which means no matter how you organize your partitions, Windows will move what is used most often into RAM when it can. Defragmenting today actually moves frequently used data to OUTER tracks on the platter (which is all you are trying to accomplish with partitioning for performance). Ancient OSes didn't do this, which is why a lot of this nonsense persists today. That means if you are a gamer, things will run just as fast regardless of partition scheme. So that means your 1% performance increase ends up as a (maybe) 1 second decrease in boot time. Knowing that boot times end up being different each time you boot makes this a placebo that is only (barely) measurable in a benchmark. Not useful for a gamer, which is what this thread was about. A hard drive does not effect frames per second unless the computer is woefully underspecced, which means OTHER upgrades are needed to make a real difference, not partitioning.


Hard drive cache has a bigger effect on performance than partitioning, and even HDD cache is barely noticeable.

So again, put up or shut up. If all you can do is throw articles at me instead of providing tangible evidence (lets see your boot times, lets see your improved performance), this is a waste of my time and yours. I've read your articles and plenty others. There are just as many pro partitioning articles as those against it. There are increases in benchmarks, but it is NOT a tangible difference that you will notice. Your claim is that it makes a huge difference. Lets see it!

 

What tangible evidence could I throw at you, benchmaking proves nothing. I explained that & you even posted two examples that validate that fact. The only evidence is by doing yourself & I can't do that for you.

This is my 4th or 5th account on MG & I have never been banned, just move around a lot. I simply consume knowledge & dispense that knowledge when the mood arises. I was in the mood & made a new account, old logins, no idea what they were now. I won't be around long, I grow weary of the mundane quickly.

I stick to fundamentals, HD partitioning happens to be a fundamental of setting up a PC properly. Everyone tweaks something on their PC, I stick to the tried & true. I'm not sure why you are fixated on boot times, it has nothing at all to do with gaming.

Also, no disk defrager move files to the outter tracks of a HD unless there is actually free space available that the file will fit into. All defraging does is make fragmented files contiguous. As you install/delete, truncate & append existing files fragmentation occurs. The more you use the system the more these files fragment & the further away from the outter tracks they end up. When you defrag it only makes them continuous again & more often than not even further from the original position they were in because they no longer will fit there. Which is also further from the outter tracks & not closer. Don't look at the cute picture your defrager displays, it is meaningless eye candy for user nothing more.

Visit the links I provided or don't, judging by your knowledge of defraging it wouldn't hurt!

 

Please PM me your other accounts (or choose one of the other moderators that are all now aware of your multiple accounts). Banned or not, we do not permit multiple accounts and you are in violation of forum rules. Therefore, your previous accounts need to be deleted.



Speaking of your "knowledge", quite a few defraggers move least used and large files to the end of the drive, allowing for frequently used files to be at the beginning. Don't use the default Windows defrag and call yourself a tweaker, heh.

Time to upgrade your knowledge, friend.

http://www.mydefrag.com/
https://www.piriform.com/defraggler (you can move large files to end of disk so that your frequently used files are moved to the front)
http://en.kioskea.net/faq/29487-auslogics-disk-defrag-move-system-files-to-the-beginning-of-the-disk


Visit the links I provided or don't, judging by your knowledge of defraging it wouldn't hurt!

I am going to go ahead and close this thread because you post a tough talk, but cannot provide any tangible proof other than linking to articles ( I asked twice). You could provide video results of before and after, but you rather argue. This is a waste of time for both of us, apparently.