To partition or not to partition, that is the question

[bzldzl]

On a 120 gig audio hard drive under osx and pt6, should I partition the drive and to what size partitions if so.

Thanks,
Jason

[where02190]

I'd recommend 3-40gb or 4-30 gb.

Hope this is helpful.

[Doc]

Ditto [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[duderonomi]

picture your drive as a football field. think of partitions as the yardline markers. If you tell the computer to search for information between the ten and twenty yard line (partition) it is going to find the information quicker than if it had to search over the whole field.

Even though partitions take up extra bytes to make them, they make the computer efficient. I have an 80 gig ata internal that is partitioned into five 14.6 gig drives.

Also, when you defragment the drive with software such as DiscWarrior, you can choose an individual partition which will take less time than having to do the whole drive at once.

play ball!

[img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[bzldzl]

Thanks!

Jason

[Muzza]

If you tell the computer to search for information between the ten and twenty yard line (partition) it is going to find the information quicker than if it had to search over the whole field.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">yeah sorta kinda.
say the drive in divided into 4 partitions. (0-25yard, 25-50, 50-75 75-100). If you use separate partitions to store audio in the same session, the seeking is more vigourous. This may slow down performance as the head has to traverse more ground to find the data.
Partitioning doesn't make drive failure any less likely. If the drive fails, all partitions fail.
The big advantage is that you can take the partition off-line to perform repairs without affecting the other partitions. Usefull in server operations, buggered if I know how it'd cope with Protools recording while repairing is done.

Partition away. Just remember that it is one physical drive.

[Doug Ring]

You can also rotate your partition use: keep a blank one and periodically move everything from one partition to another. Each move will defragment your files.

[AE]

Originally posted by Muzza:
If you use separate partitions to store audio in the same session, the seeking is more vigourous. This may slow down performance as the head has to traverse more ground to find the data.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Using more than one partition in the same session will absolutely reduce performance. In general, partitioning is a good idea but you should never split tracks from the same session between multiple partitions.

[dans]

Even though partitions take up extra bytes to make them, they make the computer efficient.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">To elaborate on this point...
Partitioning uses LESS space (bytes) since the file allocation size is smaller. The file allocation size is the smallest size any file can occupy. A SimpleText document with one word in it may only be 20 bytes, but depending on the file allocation size, it may take up 16,000 bytes or more on your hard drive. Multiply that times a few thousand times (think of your internet browser cache, and OS files) and you may be wasting gigabytes of drive space. This entirely depends on the file system chioce (HFS, HFS+, NTFS, FAT, FAT32, etc.) but generally speaking, you'll get more apparent drive space if you use partitions. With Pro Tools and other programs that usually create a small number of large files, this is less of a benefit. But for ease of file management, backup, etc., I always prefer to use partitions regardless of the drive's use.