4 partitions on a system drive?

[bubba freaktree]

if your os is win2k pro, can you partition the system drive into more than two partitions?

to get an 8mb cache drive, it seems you have to get an 80mb drive or larger. and i don't want any partition to be bigger than 20gig, so that means 20x4.

[TimOBrien]

Absolutely.

I just bought a 80Gb WD special edition and am sitting here with 3 partitions on it. The only limitation you have is the number of Drive letters you can assign to them (wish PCs were like Macs in that regard; no letters, just up to 99 names.)

You DO have to ask yourself why you are creating so many.... two drives are better than one. (OS on 1 partition and apps on another on the main drive is good. Your audio files and other data should be on a SEPARATE physical drive... my second drive is partitioned for miscellaneous data, an audio project partition and a small one for temp files.)

Have fun.

[kPreston]

why?

consider this... create one partition and use the subst command to create three more virtual drives. it'll seem like you have four drives.

[Bops2000]

in win 2k, I used to partition a 30 gig primary hard drive in two parts 1 part in ntfs file system for programs, other part for misc. programs and stuff.
second hard drive as fat 32 for audio data.

[bubba freaktree]

thanks for all the info. i'm talking about virtual drives...is there any other way to partition a drive?

the reason for 4 partitions relates to win2k/fat32. i've read that win2k/fat32 performance begins to slow when a drive size gets over 30 gig. so i figured stay at 20gig each partition.

but i was just in an office supply store picking up 3 ring binders and they happened to have a 40gig ata133 maxtor on sale with a rebate. i took it home. i think i'm going to crack it open and use it as two 20gig partitions. it only has 2mb cache, but i'm anxious to get my new system up and running.

i think the critical drive is going to be the one that has the actual gigasampler files on it. that is going to be a separate drive, and i'll make sure that one has the 8mb cache.

the important point was that i get a 133 drive, because if you put a 100 drive on an ide buss, then everything slows to 100. but now i'll be 133/133 on primary ide, and then use the second ide channel for cd rom drives and stuff like that.

there was a big report in one of the audio magazines about system performance, and the difference between 100 and 133 was significant...enough to make me chase after it. kind of like getting and extra nice bite out of the apple without having to go full-out on a scsi system. fsb and ram speed also was a noticeable gain between pc2100 and pc2700. the gain from pc2700 to pc3200 was not as significant.

so basically i'm building a pc2700/ata133 system. seems to be best bang for the buck and uses established technology.

[knowdoubt]

Originally posted by bubba freaktree:
[B]if you put a 100 drive on an ide buss, then everything slows to 100.[B]

I'm afraid you've been misinformed on that one. That in general hasn't been the case for several years (was the norm long ago though). These days, along with DMA mode most MOBO IDE controllers employ the technique of *channel switching*, which automatically switches buss channel mode speed to that of whichever devise is accessing the channel at a given time. With IDE only one devise at a time can access a channel anyway & for this reason it's typically best to seperate your HD's on different channels (letting them share a channel with a slower devise like cdrom) so it's possiblle for both drives to execute a read/write simultaneously. It may still be possible to run into an occasional modern MOBO that doesn't incorporate this *channel switching* but I would consider it a piece of junk, certainly not worthy of building a new DAW system with. Even my 5+ year old ASUS P2B with 440BX chipset channel switches & can mix & match cdrom's & HD's in any config without altering their individual performance.

I'm a bit leery about the win2K/fat32 speed dip at partitions greater than 30Gig. Can you point to a source for that nfo?

Also I don't think the ATA100->ATA133 change is that big a deal for audio. Since no HD's can actually sustain data transfer to or from the disk as fast as either rate, It's only significant for bursts to & from the HD cache & so may be a little bigger deal when combined with an 8Meg cache drive vs. 2Meg cache drive but the additional cache is likely a more significant performance booster over all than the mode speed increase between 100 & 133.

Me thinks 4 partitions per drive is more than would do you any good for your needs.


[This message has been edited by knowdoubt (edited 08-19-2003).]

[Iceberg]

I would only put 1 partition on your audio drives. I have found that having multiplte partitions on an audio drive slows the drives performance. I think I may have seen this documented somewhere before, but from my experience with benchmarking drives it did make the drive a bit slower, not a lot slower but a bit slower. So partition your system drives into as many as you want but leave your audio drives as one partition. Why would you need more. if you need to, then use folders instead.

[This message has been edited by Iceberg (edited 08-20-2003).]

[bubba freaktree]

thanks for all the advice. i'll put my two hd's on separate ide channels, and not worry too much about the cd-r slowing things down, etc.

regarding the 30 gig partition limit...i've seen it a bunch of times... people say if the partition gets bigger than 32gig in a fat32 setup, then performance drops off more and more as you get bigger and bigger.

here's one link, for example: http://windows.about.com/library/weekly/aa001231b.htm

and a quote from it:
You must use the NTFS filing system if you have any of the following requirements:

You want to be able to encrypt files so that only a certain user can access them.
You want to use fault tolerant disk configurations such as RAID 5 or mirroring.
You want to assign permissions to files, specifying which users or groups have access to which files and folders.
You want to store files larger than 4 GB.
You want to format partitions larger than 32 GB.
You want to audit files for access by certain users or groups.
You do not want the files to be accessed by someone using a boot disk.
You need a more robust filing system that is less prone to errors or corruption.


Originally posted by knowdoubt:
I'm afraid you've been misinformed on that one. That in general hasn't been the case for several years (was the norm long ago though). These days, along with DMA mode most MOBO IDE controllers employ the technique of *channel switching*, which automatically switches buss channel mode speed to that of whichever devise is accessing the channel at a given time. With IDE only one devise at a time can access a channel anyway & for this reason it's typically best to seperate your HD's on different channels (letting them share a channel with a slower devise like cdrom) so it's possiblle for both drives to execute a read/write simultaneously. It may still be possible to run into an occasional modern MOBO that doesn't incorporate this *channel switching* but I would consider it a piece of junk, certainly not worthy of building a new DAW system with. Even my 5+ year old ASUS P2B with 440BX chipset channel switches & can mix & match cdrom's & HD's in any config without altering their individual performance.

I'm a bit leery about the win2K/fat32 speed dip at partitions greater than 30Gig. Can you point to a source for that nfo?

Also I don't think the ATA100->ATA133 change is that big a deal for audio. Since no HD's can actually sustain data transfer to or from the disk as fast as either rate, It's only significant for bursts to & from the HD cache & so may be a little bigger deal when combined with an 8Meg cache drive vs. 2Meg cache drive but the additional cache is likely a more significant performance booster over all than the mode speed increase between 100 & 133.

Me thinks 4 partitions per drive is more than would do you any good for your needs.


[This message has been edited by knowdoubt (edited 08-19-2003).]

[bubba freaktree]

http://www.sun.com/desktop/products/sunpci/perftips.pdf

also check page 4 of this link...sun microsystems 2001 talking about the 32gig fat32 ceiling.

[wogg]

From Microsoft Knowledge Base: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;184006

Describes FAT32 limitations in Win2K, with a link to the XP version. Both 2K and XP will properly mount a FAT32 drive of a larger than 32M size, but will not format it in the first place. If you've got a Win98 boot disk you can format the disk (I've formatted a FAT32 80G RAID1 array with a 98 boot disk before).

I personally don't see the advantage as NTFS is a pretty mature and a generally superior file system. I've never seen anyone prove that FAT32 performed better in DAW situations.

[bubba freaktree]

you can set the cluster size in fat32 to save space.

but it's for compatability with other computers and other people's files.

i'll move over to ntfs at some point, but for now i'm staying on fat32.

[Bops2000]

run ntfs for op system - nuff said

[dawboxpro]

"run ntfs for op system - nuff said"

Thank You Bops2000