Ahh yes, but having the paging file next to the spindle makes the reads/writes faster (the tracks near the spindle move at a much faster rate because of the distance the head has to travel).
Thanks for the comments.
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Browse All TopicsI have a brand new Toshiba laptop... the HD is partitioned into two partitons: a system partition with no drive letter, followed by a C: partition.
I want to create a new partition before the system partition for paging (it would be next to the spindle). It appears that the system partition is bootable, so I'm afraid to farkle with it...
Can I safely do this?
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Yes, you can safely do that with a good 3rd party tool (e.g. Boot-It NG) which supports "sliding" a partition ... but I agree there's not a lot to be gained in this case, since you only have one drive and this will cause notable thrashing as it moves between the paging area and the OS partition. This concept works much better if the OS is not on the same physical drive as the page file -- not something you can do in this case.
By the way, the first sector is NOT "near the spindle" --> it's on the outermost cylinders of the drive (furthest from the spindle). It IS, however, much faster, because the transfer rate is notably higher on the outermost cylinders, since they have more sectors/cylinder. Doesn't help with access time; but makes a notable difference in transfer rate.
A better choice to keep good performance would be to resize the OS partition to a modest size (typically 40-60GB, depending on the OS), and create another partition for your data. This would keep the entire OS partition (including the page file) on the outermost section of the disk, so boot times; program loads; page file accesses; etc. would all be occuring in the faster outermost cylinders.
Wow... I had it backward then... I always thought that if you got closer to the spindle the data transfer rate was higher, but I guess I was wrong... now I have to go and move all of my paging partitions to the outermost cylinders.
Thanks for the info... btw, I already have a "data" partition... I'm gonna move the C: and data partition so C: is nearer the outside of the drive and see if performance improves...
Thanks again...
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by: wolfcamelPosted on 2009-10-28 at 10:12:21ID: 25685595
there will not be much to gain from doing this - despite the logic of the paging partition being near the spindle - the system will still need to move the heads to get real data, apps, and most importantly temp files.
as for the specific issue questioned..you would need to use some imaging software such as acronis or storage craft, then restore the images to newly created partitions being sure to make the system partition bootable.
plus I would seperately backup your data first