2tb hdd partitions? fragmentation?

It would depend on how the partition is used. Fragmentation is caused by repeatedly adding and deleting files over time. Of course, it will be quicker to defrag a smaller partition than it would a larger partition.

Fragmentation is handled much better in windows 7, but in general, yes it will. If you put frequently moved files into one partition, and static files (i.e. music/video) that don't move folders, you will cut down on file fragmentation.

I find partitions help with logical organization more however, and would recommend you place your music and movies into one partition for greater flexibility. Call this the "media" drive.

Your giving your Defragmenter less space to analyze and reparition I was wondering too if that makes a difference to look through 500GB at a time rather than One big chunk 2terrabytes! Also as I remember Disk Keeper is the fasest defragmenter the full version of windows defragment!

Windows 7 defragmenter is basically diskkeeper lite. Many companies are ditching the corporate Diskkeeper after switching to Win 7.

Why would most people ditch corporate version and stick with Lite I remeber the full version has moer options, and personally i would rather buy the full version get the full software code! but with all these firewall options having pc tool included and defragmenting it looks tougher on sales also, I don't have the money to spend now $70 so getting a software defragmenter with internet security packages is a plus!

Can we stay on topic here please.

Np just mentioning I think its one of the best defragmenters and if you want fast software I would reccomend it! Check out the benchmarks on Cnet, it was one of the fastest or Maximum PC News!

Licensing costs, costs of support and repair, overhead, and Win7 is "good enough".

Anyway, CIA24, we can stay on topic, and you have a set of good responses and no input from you. Have we answered your questions or do you have any input on what has been said?

I am getting mixed storys other then on here people are telling me that it is a bad idea and that it will kill my speed for gaming and such. But then again i competely forgot that i have a SSD for my OS so, for a simple answer if the 2tb hdd is going to have 1 tb of music/movies and the rest game am i better of partitiong 1tb for games 1th for movies and such?

I don't usually partition drives, but when/if I do, I usually have one partition for the OS and one partition for the rest. The reason for this is so that I can backup just my data. Also, if needed, I can reinstall the OS quickly without needing to worry about my data.

I don't segregate my data into movies, music, and so forth because if a partition runs low on space, it can be a pain to try and resize a partition, if it's even possible at that point. For this reason, I simply make seperate folders for movies, music, and such.

Well With different partitions seperated for games and music files and photos , they have a different kilobyte 512KB sektor or 4MB sektors! This leads to the softwre scanning your music files all in the 512KB sektor range and lets say than scans a partition which is 4MB of photos which is constant in the range! doesn't it speeds up scanning of the HDD and Softwre to analyze all similar sektors in a partition rasther than scanning 10KB-4MB sektor ranges! I remeber with raid it allows you to use sektor range 128kb-512kb or 1024mb depending on what your files are music-Photos-Gaming files to speed sektors up and have less clusters of files whichs peeds up efficientcy! Too many clusters of sektors isn't economically when you use up 10kb-200kb and use 512kb sektors or 1024mb you have wasted the empty space of a sektor and maybe leave it opening to viruses filling it in!

I don't know what you are specificity trying to say. Yes there is potential to waste space with larger sector sizes, but in return, you have more data that can be read at the same time, thus speeding up read times, but by a very little bit.

Best answer selected by cia24.

Well, the thread is solved, but just to add my $0.02 to the cluster size discussion: if you have lots of small files on the volume, then smaller cluster sizes are good since they minimize wastage of space due to incomplete use of clusters. If you have mostly large files, then larger cluster sizes are okay, since the wastage from incomplete use of clusters is less.

Incidentally, when formatted with cluster sizes smaller than 16kB, the default defragger in Vista (and I suppose 7 too) wouldn't play nice with the shadow copy service. I don't think this bug has been fixed so far. Only a few of the commercial (not freeware) defrag utilities have some algorithms to recognize and deal with this (to a certain extent).

As for partition sizes, I've never bothered to partition for several years now...currently I run 2x 1TB and 2X 640GB HDDs, and none are partitioned. All work just fine; fragmentation is a non-issue..just stick a good auto defragger on the system and let it handle that part, you don't need to worry about it.

Sorry..double-post.

I personally partition my hard drive since I am running a raid 0, and reinstall my OS frequently. This helps prevent me from wiping out my data partition on accident.

well with technology like advanced format that increases sektor size from 512KB to 4MB it helps to be able to tweak things yourself to make your partition more effecient like a maximum pc tweaker type of eprson I'm going into detail in depth from My A+ 2003 Certification and reading from toms hardware forum!

1 more Q anything new going on with A+2011 or Strata PC Technology 2011 that you can release!  

Its been a long time since I had real info from the org.

Wow, lots of opinions going back and forth here!

Partitions are a matter of choice nowadays. If you are going to use a free defragger or the built-in, you would want to make the partitions smaller as otherwise those defrag utilities would take a long time to defrag the larger 2 TB size disk (assuming they could even deal with the size).

On the other hand, if you use a good third-party defrag program, it's a moot point since they are much faster and more thorough, particularly if you get a program that is designed for large-sized volumes. So in that case, partitions would be an organizational preference.

Here is a Top 10 Reviews side-by-side comparison of the best defrag programs available:

http://disk-defragmenter-software-review.toptenreviews.com

Most of the top placing products would handle your disk whether or not it is partitioned. The gold medal winner also prevents fragmentation and scored the best at being "invisible" during defrag, and it was very fast in overall defragmentation (it also has a higher edition that is designed to handle terabyte sized disks if you prefer).

Check it out and try a free trial to see how you like it.

These numbers are very incorrect. The sector size is 512 Byte and not KB, which if used would lead to a minimum read/write of 512 KB = terrible performance for random IO.

And it is also not 4 MB but 4 KB that is the next sector size. Imagine a 4 MB read for every access, it would degrade your drive to a minimum.

The sector size is also at the hardware level and not at the operating system controlled partition level, so there could not be different sector sizes on different partitions on the same drive.

Of course you have to defrag your computer from time to time, but the important thing is the defragment software you use.
You have to know how to choose the best defrag software for you, I recommend you to enter this website: http://bestdefragsoftware.org/ you can read here some great information about it.