Disappearing partition and partition for speed

[LiamC]

I'm am sorry about this as this post will be partly a call for help and partly an interesting find in my search for an answer to said help cry.

Firstly, has anybody come across this issue. At work, our disks are partitioned into three—system, util/recovery (tiny) and data. Here's the slightly tricky bit, the data partition is mounted not as a drive letter, but into a folder (data) on the system partition. Very Unix like. The problem is every now and again, this mounted folder disappears. The machine will be chugging along nicely, and then the data folder won't be there. Open up Computer Management, remount the partition and everything is OK again. This has happened twice in the last week and three times in the last 9 months. Our support section knows about the issue, but doesn't know what causes it. Has anybody seen or heard of this issue? Know what causes it? Fix?

Anyhoo, whilst Googling, I came across this post for a partitioning scheme with attendent claims for speed. You all might be in'erested

http://www.msfn.org/board/lofiversion/index.php/t115303.html

Thoughts?

 

[sechs]

These guys are smoking dope.

The thesis is a problem with file placement. But they don't use any of myriad of utilities that can fix that.

It "feels" faster, but is it? No real testing here.

 

[Piyono]

Are you saying this kind of partitioning scheme is futile? Has testing been done? What alternatives would you propose?

 

[ddrueding]

I do believe that short-stroking a drive can make an appreciable difference, but creating more partitions and forcing more movement of the head? I don't think so.

 

[Piyono]

How are you forcing more head movement?
Can the swap file become fragmented? If so then containing it within in one partition would result in *less* movement of the head, would it not?

 

[ddrueding]

Forcing the swap file to be further from the OS than necessary causes more head movement. They way to avoid swap file fragmentation is to make it a fixed size.

 

[Fushigi]

It isn't so much about forcing more head movement as it is making longer head movement. Example: Take a 300GB drive and put it in 3 100GB partitions: OS/apps, swap/paging, data in that order. A seek to read a data file will go around 2/3rds across the surface of the platters. On a single partition drive, the seek may be the same length but on average will be shorter.

I personally try for a single partition that is well-maintained. Keep it defragmented, preferably using a tool that also makes free space contiguous. If you have files that change a lot, especially if they are growing, move them to the end of the defragmented files. Move archives and other seldom used files to the far end of the partition to keep frequently used files closer. In general, except for editing, multimedia files (music, movies, large photos) can also go to the end of the drive. The occasional seeks to read those are trivial & it lets you concentrate the heads over the files that are read frequently.

Essentially, try to logically short-stroke within the file system instead. Unfortunately the built-in utilities in Windows do not provide for this.

BTW, there's a sysinternals utility for defragging the 'non-defraggable' Windows files at boot time.

 

[ddrueding]

Or, just get a fast SSD and stop worrying about seek times

 

[Fushigi]

Or don't worry about seeks at all. Sure, HDs are the slowest component of a modern machine, but they're still fast enough for individual use. The only things that seem to drag for me are boot times. But as that's not an issue multiple times each day I don't really care.

 

[Mercutio]

Setting up multiple partitions for different needs is very much in line with the *nix way of doing things. Windows isn't fully equipped to allow it; you can't easily force \Documents and Settings or \Users off onto a partition by itself as you can mount /home. It's possible, but wizardry is required.

That's one of the things that annoys me about Windows.

 

[sechs]

For the record, I keep my "My Documents" folder on a different drive. Every install of Windows, I have to repoint it at that folder -- but it's always there.

 

[sechs]

Can the swap file become fragmented? If so then containing it within in one partition would result in *less* movement of the head, would it not?

In my opinion, internal fragmentation is far more problematic than external fragmentation of page files. There isn't anything that you can do about that.

On the other hand, as said, just setting up a static page file will fix the other problem.

 

[Mercutio]

For the record, I keep my "My Documents" folder on a different drive.

There's a HUGE difference between "My Documents" and everything that belongs under your username folder in Windows. You can redirect everything there to a network location with trivial ease, but then part of your login process becomes copying it all back to the C: drive.

There's a special program available from MS called linkd.exe that lets you move \Documents and Settings off the drive where Windows is installed but you have to go through all sorts of contortions in order to use it without Windows blowing up.

 

[Howell]

Merc, I know you know about folder redirection of the 4 or 5 largest parts of the profile. Roaming profile requires copying the profile across the network. Folder redirection does not. Particularly if you turn off synchronization. Is this not available outside of a domain?

 

[Mercutio]

Is this not available outside of a domain?

It is, but it's still not the behavior I want.

 

[sechs]

I think that we all agree, it's crappy design.