Modern drive speeds helped by partitioning?

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I’m surprised I haven’t seen more articles on this subject online. Perhaps it’s a moot point now so no one is discussing it?

I’m moving from a six-year-old Windows 7 computer to a new one with an Intel Core i7 processor, a 257 GB SSD, and a 2 TB HHD, and an NTFS file system. As a digital collage artist I have a collection of images (14,000 and growing) that I use in my work. During a project, I frequently perform complex sorts of the image base using the Adobe Bridge file manager. The sorts run through the entire base looking for keywords assigned in Bridge and metadata from the image files.

My question is, will the speed of searches be appreciably different depending on whether I store the images a) mixed with my other data files on the HHD drive; b) in a dedicated partition on the HHD; or c) in a dedicated partition on the SSD?

From what I’ve been able to glean, it is a definite best practice to keep code files separate from data files, so partitioning the SSD drive is a must if I decide to keep the image database on it.

I posted this question on Adobe’s Bridge program forum earlier this week, but haven’t gotten any replies. Thanks to anyone here for your thoughts.

Ann

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The root question:

My question is, will the speed of searches be appreciably different depending on whether I store the images a) mixed with my other data files on the HHD drive; b) in a dedicated partition on the HHD; or c) in a dedicated partition on the SSD?

From the options given as categories that make sense to you, in your current understanding, the answer is: c) in a dedicated partition on the SSD. (with the additional qualifier that when working with the characteristically large files used by artists the working speed of an SSD will degrade as you approach the available limit of storage space.)

The major factor is the nature of solid state, that is no moving parts, in contrast to a spinning hard drive which has to wait for the data sector to rotate under the read head to read the data into RAM to execute the search function. There is no equivalent wait time in the solid state drive, the only delay is in the processing speed of that particular collection of silicon chips.

There is much more to unpack and explain, beginning with your acronym confusion that does not help your recognition of the details underlying your question. A Hard Disk Drive (HDD) is reliable technology that is decades old. There are literally disk shaped platters coated with magnetic material that spins like a vinyl record, but much faster, under a read head that twitches with the different magnetic values of the surface underneath. These twitches are assigned values of 1’s and 0’s and are the data saved to the HDD. A Solid State Drive (SSD) is sometimes called a disk, but there is no round disk shape involved. Instead the 1’s and 0’s are saved as different electrical potentials in the chips and can be read at nearly the speed of a traveling electrical charge, slowed only by the logical process to find and read the appropriate location. And there is much, much more to learn.

But the short direction for your use would be to save and use active projects to your SSD. And archive completed projects to the HDD, where they remain available when needed. Of course, you are also making backups of all your important data to media outside the box of the system being discussed as well.

Partitioning is a concept that helps the human remember where to find things, or to grant different privileges or assign different restrictions for accessing the data. At today’s speeds the effect on search speed for a HDD is negligible. And the inherent design of SSD’s has the drive auto-leveling use and moving data frequently anyway. So the partition only exits as a concept in the directory presented to you.

I hope my current understanding of storage is helpful to you.

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ArtistAnn, HiFlyer

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Huh?, never heard or read of such claims. Separating your files based on stages of production is good common sense. 🙂

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Short stroking of HDDs was suggested as a performance boosting ‘tweak’ a decade or more ago (example: https://lifehacker.com/how-to-short-stroke-your-hard-drive-for-optimal-speed-1598306074).

Hardware has moved on and these suggestions need to be discussed and tested with relevant hardware and usage patterns in mind.

Always check the date of an article, something older than a year may be completely messed up in the assumptions made then.

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ArtistAnn, BobbyB

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Neat trick but slowly becoming useless, I remember getting a slight bit of performance by interleaving the sectors of a MFM hard drive years ago. 🙂

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@ ArtistAnn

For mechanical HDD, partitioning is helpful to speed things up, ie keep system or data files that are often-accessed on the 1st and/or 2nd partition(= at the beginning of the disk) and data files that are seldom-accessed on the 3rd or 4th or later partitions(= at the end of the disk).

For SSD, the above do not apply, ie partitioning may only serve to help the user locate and/or separate his/her data files.

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ArtistAnn, BobbyB

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anonymous wrote:

For SSD, the above do not apply, ie partitioning may only serve to help the user locate and/or separate his/her data files.

I agree, partitioning on an SSD serves no useful purpose.

The new PC will be much faster due to the more recent hardware so no additional steps are needed.

As you have 2 disks I would install Windows and all programs on the SSD and use the HDD as a single partition for all your data – you can move the default location for Documents etc to the HDD. You can then use an external USB disk for backup.

cheers, Paul

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ArtistAnn, OscarCP, BobbyB

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ArtistAnn:

The one key benefit you would gain from putting your data and your programs on separate partitions on the same drive is if you have to do a clean install of Windows. Since your data would be on a separate partition, it would be untouched by a clean install of Windows. However, if everything was in the same partition, then your data would be wiped off of the drive if you did a clean install.

An even better way to accomplish the above is to have separate drives for your data and programs. In this way, if your Windows drive is actually bad and must be replaced, your data will be safely stored on the other drive.

As to the question of whether you would gain a speed advantage by putting your data and programs in separate partitions on the same drive, the answer to that question is “No”. However, if your data and programs are on separate drives, Windows can read both drives at the same time, rather than one drive at a time, which may in fact give you a boost in speed. I say “may”, because if the two drives are SSDs, it likely will give you an increase in speed, but perhaps not enough to notice.

With a mechanical drive, when everything is on one physical drive, even if in separate partitions on that drive, the drive head can only read one thing at a time. However, if your data and programs are on separate physical drives, there are now two drive heads doing the reading (and writing), thereby resulting in a boost in access time, which means that the process will be faster. Mechanical drives are a lot slower than SSDs (solid state drives), and so that’s why you would get a bigger boost with two mechanical drives than you would with two SSDs. Also, SSDs don’t have drive heads which must move into place prior to reading (or writing) data.

Jim

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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ArtistAnn, HiFlyer, BobbyB

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Thanks to everyone for your helpful advice!

It had not occurred to me that putting the image base on the D drive would be faster because it would allow both drives to work at the same time. I also had not thought that, if I partition the D drive, I should put the image base in the first partition, at the beginning of the drive.

I took a quick and dirty survey last night of all the online articles I could find on this subject from the past two years. Most people group the OS and programs together–only a few make a separate partition for the OS. Almost everyone puts the OS/programs in a different partition from the data, and preferably on separate drives. Worrying about wearing out your SSD is unnecessary. What is most important is setting up things so it is quick for you to work with your files–forgetting where things are stored or constantly having to tell the system where to save things can waste as much or more of your time. My conclusion is that everything is a matter of personal preference when it comes to whether or not to partition your storage and how to set it up.

I haven’t decided what to do with my own computer, but it is standard for me to mull things over until the last minute when a decision is needed. lol I’m very grateful to finally have a place where I can ask questions and receive quality responses! Thank you all. 😀

Ann

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