Short-stroking went wrong, please help.

Rafael Mestdag · Aug 14, 2016

I don't know what I've done wrong this time because I've done it before and it worked. I used the Windows 7 installation software to partition my 1TB Seagate into 2 partitions; the supposedly short-stroked one has 120GB, and the other one has about 850GB.

Both are primary partitions but here's the strange thing: the 850GB partition, which was supposed to be the slower one, on the inner part of the disk, is actually the faster one!?

How could this happen? When I open the disk manager I see the 120GB partition on the left and the other one on the right, indicating that the 120GB partition is the first one, hence the short-stroked one, right?

PS: I used Crystal Disk Mark to measure my partitions' speed.

basroil · Aug 14, 2016

You CANNOT have a second partition when short stroking, and the drive must support that mode of operation. For a true short-stroke drive, you must put the ONLY partition on the last ~25% , with the rest of the drive as unallocated space!

In this case though, most likely you overfilled that partition and it's highly fragmented, which can affect speed.

Short-stroking is no longer a valid option for anyone though, SSD prices have decreased so much that you can buy a 256gb SSD with 10x the performance of a short-stroked drive for the same price (assuming 1TB drive with 25% used)

Phillip Corcoran · Aug 14, 2016

You've got it all wrong, the inner part of the HDD is faster because the circumference is lower than the outer part, hence less distance -- in effect this means the RPM faster in the middle than at the outside.

However, it's ridiculous to try and take advantage of that.

basroil · Aug 14, 2016

Phillip Corcoran :

Yes and no, assuming a fixed angular velocity (which the max RPM usually is), the outside actually has higher bits/s simply because it reads more track length in the same time (if confused, think of it in terms of linear velocity tangental to a rotating disk). The downside is of course that non-sequential reads take longer because it needs to wait longer until the same data distance is read. Hence short stroking, where you use the outer, faster side, but limit the possible tracks to minimize non-sequential downtime. You guys made a decent intro to it at http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/short-stroking-hdd,2157.html .

Rafael Mestdag · Aug 14, 2016

basroil :

What I'd like you to please make clear to me once and for all is whether I should leave the rest of the disk unallocated or if I can partition it as a primary partition and still have the benefit of the short-stroke speed on the first, smaller partition.

Thx in advance

basroil · Aug 14, 2016

Rafael Mestdag :

I already stated it, here's everything in case you missed it:
1) DON'T BOTHER SHORT STROKING, ssds are cheap now, and offer much better performance
2) You MUST leave the rest unallocated if you are going to short stroke.
3) Not all drives support that mode of operation, ask the manufacturer for information if it's no longer available.

Rafael Mestdag · Aug 14, 2016

basroil :

Thank you, my main doubt was in relation to leaving or not the rest unallocated. I must've missed it from your previous post.

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Short-stroking went wrong, please help.

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