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Read/write speeds are fine on 1 partition on my HDD, but not the other!

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  • Partition
  • Storage
  • Hard Drives
Last response: in Storage
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October 12, 2013 9:53:06 AM

hi there..

recently i have been playing games which require excessive amounts of loading (Farming in Borderlands 2) , and i started to notice that these loading times are oddly high for a PC like mine,

SPECS:
i5 3570K @ 3.4Ghz OCed
GTX 670
8Gb RAM
No SSD, the culprit HDD is a WD caviar Blue 500Gbs

so i went ahead and i asked for a standard loading time of similar rigs..that confirmed my suspicions..it is in fact considered slow for a PC like mine to load a map in 30 seconds like mine does ( the standard is 5-6 with 15 sec as maximum)

so i went ahead and made sure that the windows defragment tool is working...and it was, but when i tried Defragller, it said that i had 21% framented on both my C (system) and D (Installed games) drivers..
both of those drivers are my Western Digital Caviar Blue 500Gbs @ 7200 RPM drive..

first off, i tested with crystalDiskmark, mainly Sequential reads/writes

C: (100GB) scored 124MB/s Read and 114Mb/s Writes
D: (the Rest of the HDD ) scored 90 mb/s Read and 90 mb/s write !!

i don't claim that i know much about storage, but that sounds strange to me! aren't they both part of the same HDD? why is there such a huge difference in speeds?

anyway, i went ahead and did a lengthy defrag using defragler on only the D drive, now results are:
C: Same (although i didn't defrag this one yet)
D: went down to 80 for both read and write!!

it's puzzling and i really don't know much on the subject..any help would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: here's a crystaldiskmark reading demonstrating what i have described, and this one is a bit worse than the last

Quote:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 79.758 MB/s
Sequential Write : 76.954 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 35.266 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 49.229 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.602 MB/s [ 147.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 1.140 MB/s [ 278.3 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 1.549 MB/s [ 378.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 1.120 MB/s [ 273.5 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [D: 82.4% (301.3/365.7 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2013/10/12 19:02:37
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition [6.1 Build 7600] (x64)


Quote:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 126.854 MB/s
Sequential Write : 122.297 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 47.115 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 64.584 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.621 MB/s [ 151.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 1.062 MB/s [ 259.2 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 1.306 MB/s [ 318.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 1.096 MB/s [ 267.7 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: 62.0% (62.0/100.0 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2013/10/12 19:10:42
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition [6.1 Build 7600] (x64)

More about : read write speeds fine partition hdd

a b G Storage
October 12, 2013 10:06:07 AM

The problem with partitioning is that you force the 2nd, 3rd, etc paritions to be farther on the physical disc than being on the inside. The inside of the disc, ie, closest to the center, is the fastest, because it has to rotate less to read the data. By partitioning, you forced all your games to be at least 100gb from the center of the disc, which in a single platter disc, 500gb, is 1/5 of the fastest part of the disc is not used for your games, but just for the OS.

Now also take into account, windows does other stuff in the background, so it is reading windows files, so now it has to read those, from the fastest part, then load part of your map, so it has to look up the partition table, switch stuff, move the head, then start reading, then go back, load a windows file, temp file, etc, then back to the new partition.

Really, there is no need to have a parition just for installed games. If you windows goes south and your to reinstall, you will have to reinstall the games anyways for registry files, shortcuts, etc anyways.

If you want your game on the fastest part of the disc, wipe everything, make 1 partition, install windows, install your game right after. It will get it closest to the center it can.
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October 12, 2013 10:29:54 AM

thanks a lot for the enlightening answer, that actually makes a lot of sense..
in your concept then, will it be faster if i just move the OS to another partition and used the HDD as 1 solid drives for installed games?
oh, and i just tried copying the game to the "faster" (C) partition..i gained no performance boost what so ever and it was the same exact number of seconds taken to load different maps like when it was on the other one, don't know what to make of that but i thought i should just mention it..
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Related resources
October 16, 2013 1:24:56 PM

well, i can't call my problem "solved" as of yet..anyone care to help me with this..
the support forums at Borderlands 2' forums aren't much of a help regarding loading times of their game..so i was hoping to get to the root of this through here..
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a c 971 G Storage
October 16, 2013 5:06:59 PM

Actually getochkn, you got that backwards, the outter part of hard drives platters are the fastest because they are moving faster.

If you create two partitions on a drive the first one will be created on the outer/faster part and the second one on the inner/slower area.

handakes - what you are seeing is perfectly normal. You can speed things up a bit by installing it to C:
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a b G Storage
October 17, 2013 2:46:41 AM

popatim said:
Actually getochkn, you got that backwards, the outter part of hard drives platters are the fastest because they are moving faster.

If you create two partitions on a drive the first one will be created on the outer/faster part and the second one on the inner/slower area.

handakes - what you are seeing is perfectly normal. You can speed things up a bit by installing it to C:


Opps. Knew what I meant, just reversed it. lol.
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