Free Space

[poutnik]

The purpose of Partition3 is to have greater control over the files that can be placed in that partition without significantly reducing system performance. Thus, if it became necessary to place files in Partition3, then I would choose to place small infrequently used files in that partition because doing so would have the least impact on system performance.

I think the right purpose of the 2nd partition in 2 partition scenario is,
that any further extra optimization of its files ( including the 3rd partition to that )
brings too small performance enhancement to be justified.

[Bill]

Partition3 is not intended to optimize performance. It is intended to have greater control over performance loss when files are placed near the end of the disk.
30% drive space for Partition3 may be a bit too generous, but Partition3 still serves its purpose on my data drives.

[poutnik]

Partition3 is not intended to optimize performance. It is intended to have greater control over performance loss when files are placed near the end of the disk.

Is not it the same. said by other words ?  Optimization is both collecting gains and avoiding loses ( unless they bring a gain).

I think Either we care about file access performance, putting such files to 1st partition,
Either we do not, putting such files to 2nd partition.

If we care about file performance losses, we may should not put them toward end of the disk.
If we separate infrequently used small and big files,
I guess the loss for small files will be bigger than the gain for big ones.

But my truth is not patented nor guaranted, so I feel free to be wrong anytime.
Oponents in discussion are not enemies, but friends tuning our knowledge.

[petrober]

Yes, MyDefrag can do that. The exact speed increase depend on various factors, of course, but doubling the boot speed is not uncommon. MyDefrag will (amongst other things) optimize your system disk for the best possible booting speed by placing all the files that are used by booting right after one another, so the computer can read them very quickly without much harddisk movement.

True , but what did this mean for booting in reality ? It is really important ?
I guess not. My 12GB systempartition will be defragmented from time to time. I do that to help the disk. I never do this cause of the feeling that my system is booting very slow today !
And indeed Win7 is booting always the same seconds. Independent if it is defragmented today or last month. Maybe it differs a few seconds but I don't feel it. So far the disk will not be filled by new programs or whatever additional stuff I don't see a reason to defragment for speedup boottime. I will use a stopwatch next time before and after defragment.
And remember my system disk does not contains software beside the os.

Regards,

   Petrober

[petrober]

You can speedup your system much more by split intelligient into more then one partition.

No. From a speed perspective it is best to have only 1 partition, not to split a harddisk into multiple partitions. If you have multiple partitions then the harddisk heads have no choice but to jump between the partitions. Having only 1 partition gives MyDefrag a chance to place the files in their best postion, and much closer together.

Joeren you are looking straight from the defragmentation point of view. The fastest partition is a partition where is no need to defragment, because it's data does not fragment.
I used a huge partition for managing fotos. Original and worked out files. All together about 140000 files and 250GB.
After a while a lot of files were changed. Partition gets more and more fragment. Biggest issue were the file open dialogs from Software. It take somtimes 30s and more to display the filestructure, cause of a lot of directories.
At that time I used jkdefrag or oo to defragment. After defragmentation the filedialogs where quite fast again.
But this costs me hours of fragmentation time because every fragemntation software touches all files to get a new order and moves them around the disk. About 80000 files were never changed from me anymore. But the defragger moved them again and again.
Now I have splitted into two partitions. All untouched originals are store on a different partition. From time to time I add new files. Not more. The partition never becomes fragmented. And the access to the pictures is fast since month.
From my point of view this additional partition makes really sence in case of speed and mantenance.

I know mydefrag has a lot of new features and maybe it is able to manage this in a optimal way. But now I have it in my hands and no additional software is needed to cleanup the disk.

Regards,

   Petrober

[petrober]

.....My system disk (Win7U) has 12GB. There are currently free 900MB. It makes no different if 2GB or 500MB are left. The farest way for the read/write access can be 12GB distance and not more (i.e. 450GB).......

In general I agree with your post, but I am afraid you had brought it to extreme.
It could be you will soon regret of having so small system partition, unless enlarging it.

You are right. Unfortunately the notebookdisks are not growing that fast. So I really need every byte on it.
Otherwise I have to buy twice a year the next upcomming disk size. From time to time I resize the system partition. 

Also, such full partition gets fragmented more quickly.
Being small and on fast tracks, you will not notice it much as head travelling distances are short, as you say.

But if you by test put 512kB files to multiple fragments, you would notice very significant read slowdown even here.
There is always cca 4 ms rotation + 1-2 ms settling delay  (7200 rpm ) even for small distances,
during that time cca 400 kB could be transferred, instead of moving to another 4kB cluster. ( at 80 MB/s transfer speed ).

Sure, caching and NCQ will improve things, but not much if files are not cached yet.

This sounds interesting. If we are talking about an os disk. Is there a value to calculate what minimum of free space will keep the best ?

Regards,

   Petrober

[jeroen]

But this costs me hours of fragmentation time because every fragemntation software touches all files to get a new order and moves them around the disk.

The nice thing about MyDefrag is that you can make scripts, you can control exactly what MyDefrag will do. If you do not want it to touch certain files then you can make it so.

There are advantages and disadvantages for formatting a disk into a single partition or into multiple partitions. There is no single right choice, for some people a single partition is the best choice, for other people multiple partitions is better. All I am saying is that with a single partition you can organize the data on the disk for the best possible speed. With multiple partitions you have no such choice.

[poutnik]

..........All I am saying is that with a single partition you can organize the data on the disk for the best possible speed. With multiple partitions you have no such choice.

I am afraid it is not fully true.

No data can have best possible speed without denying best possible speed to other data.
This influence is direct by file placement, and indirect in way how partition, file system and the whole disk are defined and managed.

The key to optimization is to accept such a loss, allowing bigger gain to appear.

Creation of 2nd partition is the same kind of gaining loss,
as accepting gain loss for spacehogs, putting them to spacehogs.

Saying files in the 2nd partition suffer performance loss
is like saying files in spacehogs suffer performance loss.

Both is true, and both is true intentionally.
Overall performance means denying it for some.

The 2nd partition is little cutting wings from files they do not need them,
to add wings to files left in the 1st one that do need them much more.

It is slowing down "slow spacehogs" in order to speeding up "fast spacehogs".
An not only spacehogs, concerning ways Windows likes to place files.
The 2nd partition is forcing Windows to keep operations in compact fast disk area.

The way how files are placed by part. layout and MD scripts is just one side of the thing.
The other one is what happens in time between.
Single partition becomes a bigger jungle.

More was stated above in the thread.

[poutnik]

This sounds interesting. If we are talking about an os disk. Is there a value to calculate what minimum of free space will keep the best ?

I am not aware about exact numbers, either relative or absolute one.
I guess the are very depending on scenario.

Common sense tells to me a rule of thumb
the size of processed files in a kind of "operation batch"
 ( temp files, installation files, newly installed files, removed files )
should be much lower than total free space.

Otherwise a partition gets messy quickly.

It comes to mind an analogy to filled fridge. What is the optimum free space in the fridge ?
Less space, more things, but harder to keep tidy.

[Bill]

It comes to mind an analogy to filled fridge. What is the optimum free space in the fridge ?
Less space, more things, but harder to keep tidy.

I like the fridge analogy; it's so true.