Logical vs Primary Partition Size?

[JamesV]

Using Partition Magic to format and partition a 3rd 160GB SATA HD drive dedicated for PT audio. The option to create logical and primary partitions is given. Got a feeling from a search of DUC that many feel that partitioning is unnecessary other than just for convenience of housekeeping. Two questions. Is it indeed true that there is no perceived improvement or relationship on PT performance relative to partition size and does PT app handle or recognize audio data differently in a Logical partition than in a Primary partition? Again both questions are directed towards HDD dedicated for PT audio data

Opinions greatly welcomed.

James

[Obsidian Dragon]

Protools does not have any performance improvements or perceived benefit based on partition size. That is assuming it is not running out of available space. It also does not matter if it is a primary partition or not. The only time this is an issue is when people hear that protools should have two separate physical hard drive (one for OS and the Protools application and another one for the audio data) they assume that they can get by with two logical partitions. This is incorrect as the drives heads must still stop reading/writing the audio data to go to do other tasks required by the OS and Protools. Having a separate drive (Physically) allows the heads of the audio drive to continue reading/writing while the heads of the other drive can service the OS and Protools requests.

Think of it as if you have two people with two cars. One can go to the supermarket, pick up the kids from school, drop off the dry cleaning, etc. while the other can take a cruise down the coast. If you only have one person and one car, that person going on the cruise down the coast must keep comeing back to go to the supermarket, pick up the kids from school, drop off the dry cleaning, etc. and therefore can not efficiently enjoy the cruise down the coast. This is probably a weak analogy but hopefully you get the idea.

[JamesV]

This is probably a weak analogy but hopefully you get the idea.

A bit more remedial than I was hoping for. Just to reiterate, my question was specific in regards to current thought or process when formatting and partitioning of multiple dedicated drives for PT audio data, nothing to do with the OS drive with PT app. Size and type of partitions would be helpful.

[bb_aus]

have a primary partition for current working sessions big enough for all your sessions but not overly big so that it is quicker when you want to reformat the disk. the rest can be used for backup or general data whatever you need. if you have multiple drives for audio you can use the remainder of the drive to backup the other one, not that it is a compleate backup but any extra copy goes a long way.
as for type FAT32 or NTFS doesnt realy matter there are some therotical benifits of larger clusters and you can format FAT32 with 32K clusters as aposed to 4K on NTFS but these days the bottle necks are usually elseware so unless you need compatability with non XP systems just stick with NTFS