Whats exactly is a HDD Partition?

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devilgodspider

devilgodspider

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The reason I'm asking, is a question popped up on my head.
I'm buying a 1TB Seagate Barracuda, and I'm thinking of in the future buying another one so FRAPS can store it's footage there and take less of a performance hit.

However, if I had a 2TB HDD, and made 2 partitions (2x1TB), would it be the same as having 2 1TB disks?

Thus why I'm asking what a Partition is

EDIT: When I say take less of a performance hit, I mean while FRAPS is recording.
 
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Phillip Corcoran

Phillip Corcoran

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A partition is an area on the hard drive which can be formatted so data can be written to it.

If you create two partitions on the same hard drive you will see two separate drive letters in Windows, one for each partition.

In that respect, therefore, it's similar to having two separate physical hard drives, but the similarity ends there.
 
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devilgodspider

devilgodspider

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So, what should I do? Buy 2 1TB drives or buy a 2TB drive and partition it? (Money is not a problem)
 
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fzabkar

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If you partition a 2TB with two 1TB partitions, then the first partition will have almost double the transfer rate of the second one, and it will also have a faster transfer rate than a 1TB physical drive. This is because the outer zones pack about twice as much data per track than the inner zones. Just compare two HD Tune benchmark graphs and you'll notice how the transfer rate gradually declines from left (outer zone) to right (inner zone).
 
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devilgodspider

devilgodspider

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Interesting.... So, I should put my games and stuff on the faster partition and FRAPS Storage and music on the slower one, correct? How do I see which of the two is the fastest? Does size matters? (1.5TB and 500GB partitions or 2 1TB partitions)
 
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fzabkar

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I'm not a gamer, so I can't offer any advice on that score.

However, here are two HD Tune benchmarks. One is for a 3TB drive, the other for a 1TB.

http://img.maryno.net/images/b39eb82c211d45fc4967bedb48cbc029/434418d0e7dbc6baf21bc54c046f11f9.jpeg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/615zZwUeSJL.png

Let's say that you need to access data at the 800GB mark on the 1TB drive. The transfer rate at that point will be 125MB/s. The transfer rate at the same point on the 3TB drive would be around 190MB/s.
 
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