To partition or not to partition, that is the question.

[DTJ]

I'm looking for a little help/advice (particularly from anyone at digidesign). I'm currently running ProTools Free on a Mac G4 400 AGP with the original 10 GB 7200 RPM hard drive. I have JUST added a 45 GB IBM Deskstar 7200 RPM drive (as a slave to the other one). I haven't even initialized the 45 GB (yet).

I'm trying to determine whether or not to partition the 45 GB drive. I could leave it as a single 45 GB partition or I was thinking about partitioning it something like 25-10-10 (or 10-10-25, does the order matter??) with the 25 GB partition for audio files. Is there anything to be gained, as far as ProTools Free is concerned, by partitioning (or not partitioning)? If I did partition, would it be better to put ProTools Free on the same partition as the audio files, or on a separate partition on the same drive, or on a different drive (i.e., the original 10 GB drive)?

If anyone has any insight on the above, I'd like to hear it.

[motopsyco]

DTJ,

Partitioning is a matter of personal choice. The first partition generally will be the fastest, thus use it to edit with. Use the others for storage. The new IBM GXP drives (which I believe is of the type you bought) are nearly as fast to the inner cylinders as it is to the outer ones. Partitioning might marginally up performance of a large HD compaired to one large volume. Always run your applications from the system disk.

Cheers!

[MacDaddy WGAR]

The rule of thumb that we use with the full pt is that you should have no larger than 9gb partitions. That was the official response from Digi I don't remember why exactly but think it had to do with allocation doing 48 or more tracks. Of course with ptf you needn't worry about! Of course the beauty is you can defrag a partition while still using other partitions.

Bill