Should I avoid using fastest hard drive for storage - even after partition?

Question

Long story short, I'm getting a new hard drive that's suppose to be faster than the one I currently have. My main purpose for the new HDD is boot (Windows 7) and gaming. The leftover space would be use for storage. Essentially, it will be partitioned into 3 separate drives (OS, Game, Storage)

My question is - will cluttering up the HDD with data files (videos/music) in the separate partition slow down the loading of OS/games? Should I avoid putting any storage files into the HDD completely and use it purely for gaming and OS?

For example, consider these two scenarios
1) Partition 1 (OS) - 10 out of 100 GB
Partition 2 (Game) - 50 out of 400 GB
Partition 3 (Storage) - 0 out of 500 GB

and

2) Partition 1 (OS) - 10 out of 100 GB
Partition 2 (Game) - 50 out of 400 GB
Partition 3 (Storage) - 400 out of 500 GB <== **difference**

Will OS and games load faster in scenario 1 than scenario 2?

Answer 1

not noticiably unless you pick up a virus getting your videos and music on it.



now it will take longer to index all your drives, but w7 shouldn't be running indexers or virus scans or anything while you're in a high performance 3d gaming mode. I would use the rest as storage.



from personal experience, I would give the OS more than 10gb, especially if you plan on putting any programs that arent games on the same partition as the OS. (in fact, W7 might take up >10gb on it's own, depending upon settings (size of pagefile, avaliability of hibernation file...)



also, it might actually be a good idea to put game files in the same partition as the os, because the system will be accessing windows files while you are playing, to some degree, and you want the read/write head to have to move as little as possible.

Answer 2

I don't understand the purpose of the three partitions. Why do you need a partition 'Game' for?

every game you install is installed on the partition of the OS if you don't change the installation path. There is no need to install every game on the other partition.



It doesn't matter how much data you have on the drive, as long as it's not critically full, like only 2% of empty storage. For loading games it also doesn't matter how much space the partition has, it still remains the same hard drive, but split into three imaginary drives.

If you want better performance, don't create the second partition, rather install the games on the OS partition. The addition of the third partition will not have any influence on your first partition.

overall, the more partitions, the slower your drive probably will be. For normal use you won't notice a difference though.

the things that really influence your gameplay are your CPU, memory and videocard.



advice: use 1 partition - any difference is not significant.

Answer 3

Why could you split a no longer easychronic into distinctive partitions on your distinctive records? Partitioning is sensible now and back to divide up 2 distinctive components, yet in maximum situations you ought to no longer. What happens in case you replenish one among your partitions (which comprise your movies) yet have fairly a lot of area in yet another (which comprise your records)? that is amazingly difficult to repartition a no longer easychronic with out formatting it and wiping out all archives. no longer impossible, yet no longer rather well worth the worry. additionally, with the aid of fact they're all on the comparable no longer easychronic, partitioning does not make the laptop run swifter. yet, in case you nonetheless desire to partition, then no it won't reason considerable issues as such. it is going to easily be annoying on the grounds which you're proscribing the quantity of area you ought to use for each little thing.

Answer 4

You should split it out. Remember video/audio is IO intensive and it will degrade the performance. Mixing the video/audio with OS is even worse since the read/write arm of the hard drive will spin crazy. Best would be use a dedicated OS disk with every thing in the other.