Fred Langa's take on Partioning Large Hard Drives

From Langalist 3/10/04

Hi Fred,
I know you have covered this numerous times - and I have personally printed the information that you have provided and use it each time I set up a new computer....but was wondering what your take on "leaving Win XP drives as one large NTFS partition" as suggested by "CAREY HOLZMAN, president of Discount Computer Repair in Glendale, Ariz., and the author of The Healthy PC: Preventative Care And Home Remedies For Your Computer (McGraw-Hill Osborne, 2003). "

He made the suggestion here:
http://www.techbuilder.org/article.htm?ArticleID=47626 (tip #18)

18.) Do not partition the hard drive. Windows XP's NTFS file system runs more efficiently on one large partition. The data is no safer on a separate partition, and a reformat is never necessary to reinstall an operating system. The same excuses people offer for using partitions apply to using a folder instead. For example, instead of putting all your data on the D: drive, put it in a folder called "D drive." You'll achieve the same organizational benefits that a separate partition offers, but without the degradation in system performance. Also, your free space won't be limited by the size of the partition; instead, it will be limited by the size of the entire hard drive. This means you won't need to resize any partitions, ever. That task can be time-consuming and also can result in lost data.

The article otherwise has (IMHO) several useful tips on tweaking XP (a couple that you haven't even covered <gr>)

Thanks - and cheers! Loyal subscriber, Mike Derbyshire, Canada


Fred Langa's Response

Well, that's Interesting, Mike, but I beg to differ with Cary. Here are my reasons, so you can read 'em and make up your own mind:

A formatted hard drive is divided into sectors; an operating system will treat a collection of sectors--- called a "cluster "--- as the smallest, indivisible unit for normal file operations. Different OSes, and different hard drive formatting methods, use different-sized clusters.

For example, an 8GB NTFS partition will use 8KB clusters; but a large NTFS partition or drive (>32GB) will use 64KB clusters.

Recall that a cluster is functionally indivisible in normal file operations. That means that if you save, say, a 1K fie--- a few paragraphs of plain text--- on a 8GB NTFS partition, the file system will write that 1K into the smallest possible space, which is one 8K cluster. The file occupies 1K of the 8K cluster, but the rest of the cluster is now unavailable, so 7K of the cluster is now "slack" or wasted space.

Store the same file on a >32GB NTFS drive/partition, and the file system will again allot one cluster, but this time the cluster is 64K. The file still consumes only 1K of the cluster, but now fully 63K is wasted slack space. How is wasting 63K more efficient than wasting7K?

Multiply that kind of waste by the number of files in your system, which almost surely is in the tens of thousands and may easily be in the hundreds of thousands, and you can be talking a *lot* of wasted space.

Before anyone panics, let's be clear: No standard file system is 100% efficient; all involve at least some wastage or "slack." It's normal, and OK. But with common drive formats, the larger the drive, the greater the slack. Sectioning a huge hard drive into reasonably-sized partitions--- logical drives--- means that each partition can utilize smaller, more-efficient clusters. You actually end up with more usable space on your hard drive!

Huge unpartitioned drives (or gigantic partitions themselves, for that matter) have other drawbacks, too: They're harder to back up and restore; they can take longer to index or search; they take longer to scan and defrag; it's harder to set up dual- or multi-boot systems--- the list of problems goes on and on.

There may be some arguments to justify not using reasonably-sized partitions and logical disks on huge hard drives, but I think the real-world considerations of maintenance, restorability, and general storage efficiency far outweigh them. To me, the "one giant drive/partition" approach is dangerous, inefficient, wasteful--- and almost silly! Fred Langa 3/10/04
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Note he didn't even touch on the security of data on other partitions. I keep my data files on a separate partition than XP, same as many of the other folks here. With today's huge hard drives, I don't care about space! But, I want to keep my data, no matter what I have to do on the C Drive, including a reinstall of XP. I have never lost my D drive by "accident ", only deliberate reformatting.

For anyone who is interested in Fred Langa's newsletterLangalist

Johanna

 

I get BOTH newsletters , and they each have a distinctive style. Thanks for clearing up the cluster confusion, Arie, your explanation makes more sense. (and you have a useful, informative newsletter, too! )

Johanna

 

In the 3/15/04 issue of the Langalist, Fred says he made a mistake and offers an explanation. See it HERE .

B

 

I knew that what I was doing made sense, and I was doing it on a 24MB hard drive on my Amiga 2000, circa 1990.

 

Apart from Fred's not to subtle attempts at getting us to purchase his plus edition, I enjoy reading bits of his weekly "free" newsletter, and appreciate it when he admits a mistake. No one is perfect after all.