Does having one drive (or logical partition) dedicated to Windows and applications, and another drive or partition dedicated to data still offer a performance benefit?
It used to be that I'd install Windows on its own partition, have another partition for data, setup my page file to be a static size equal to the amount of RAM I had multiplied by some factor that nobody could agree on (I had one computer with a separate physical hard drive dedicated for the page file), go deep into settings and check some box saying I wanted to optimize things for server use, and countless other rituals that are probably stupid now.
I understand that putting data on a separate logical partition, at least, lets you reformat your OS partition without losing data, but I have backup in place that would survive my entire box exploding, so that's not really an issue. And since things are better than they were with Windows Me & 95, I don't find myself reformatting every 3 months, either.
Anyway, we now have defraggers that claim to put applications on the fast part of the disk, so it's not as though your pictures will be hogging the outer edges of the HD. So, I fail to see why a fresh install of Windows would be any faster than a fresh install with 100 gigs of images on the same partition (assuming you don't fill the disk up to 99% or something unreasonable).
So, is any of this data segregation and other old strategies really necessary anymore for performance purposes? If so, why? Are there any specific reasons other than ritual?
Thanks.
It used to be that I'd install Windows on its own partition, have another partition for data, setup my page file to be a static size equal to the amount of RAM I had multiplied by some factor that nobody could agree on (I had one computer with a separate physical hard drive dedicated for the page file), go deep into settings and check some box saying I wanted to optimize things for server use, and countless other rituals that are probably stupid now.
I understand that putting data on a separate logical partition, at least, lets you reformat your OS partition without losing data, but I have backup in place that would survive my entire box exploding, so that's not really an issue. And since things are better than they were with Windows Me & 95, I don't find myself reformatting every 3 months, either.
Anyway, we now have defraggers that claim to put applications on the fast part of the disk, so it's not as though your pictures will be hogging the outer edges of the HD. So, I fail to see why a fresh install of Windows would be any faster than a fresh install with 100 gigs of images on the same partition (assuming you don't fill the disk up to 99% or something unreasonable).
So, is any of this data segregation and other old strategies really necessary anymore for performance purposes? If so, why? Are there any specific reasons other than ritual?
Thanks.