I have a 1TB Seagate Barracuda and I am using Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit. Will having my OS and installed programs on a separate partition improve performance ?
If you mean installing your OS on a different physical hard disk (not a different partition) than your programs, yes you will see some performance gains with higher resource intensive programs like video/photo editing, or games. Maybe even boot a few seconds faster, depending on your setup. But if I understand your question properly, you will not see any gains.
All a partition does is separate one physical hard drive disk (HDD) into multiple "imaginary" a.k.a. Logical, disks. Your computer still needs to access the HDD which can only read one section at a time. Partitions are used mainly for a dual boot setup or to separate files into more categorized segments, possible for encryption.
That is mostly correct, but there is one more thing:
Different parts of the drive operate at different speeds. The fastest part of the hard drive is the first 10%.
Theoreticaly, this would be the ideal
Partition 1: 12GB for swap file & some boot files (this moves to between 3 and 4 if you have enough ram)
Partition 2: Windows, 40GB-60GB
Partition 3: Fast Programs
Partition 4: Slow Programs
Partition 5: Documents, movies, etc...stuff that does not need Installation.
Of course, this is a lot of partitions to have on one drive...
So since that would be a lot of partitions on one drive here's how you compact it to perform,however you will need another hdd as a slave
1st:-partition 1:-Install windows-create 1st one time image
2:-install a few of the most used apps-create 2nd image
3:-fully update windows-create 3rd image
4.0:-install the most used apps
4.1:-install the least used-create final image
try & also use software like foxit reader or sumatra instead of that bloated junk adobe,basicly substitute large junk software for free smaller footprint software,this includes security apps as well also any printers you add etc disable auto start with windows,it's just not needed that's what dock icons are for
2nd:-partition on first hdd
Data:-photo's,downloads,music etc,etc & maybe keep your torrent downloads here too
2nd hdd
1st partition:-data ,basically a clone of the above perhaps without the torrents
2nd partition:-ghost one time backup images of C only,any images taken after the final image above can be deleted since you'll need the space when making weekly images
3rd partition:-pagefile
That's it apart from keeping your 3rd party apps to the minimum as much a poss,mind you since you have 64bit you have an advantage over me as i'm on 32bit xp pro on a comp that has 2gb installed but can only use 1gb..lol.. Presario S5020AN,ok i have a 256 AGP graph card to help with objectdesktop as well as the above hdd's,i can get this comp to run faster but it's ok for what i use it for.
Pagefile at front on 2nd hdd is pointless since i couldn't discern any diff so placed it at farthest point,i also had tried putting apps on a partition beside c but didn't see any gains,most probably would've if i had them on the 2nd drive,however doing so creates issues with recovery if there's a need too,hence putting windows & apps on c but attempting to use minimal software or at least software with a small foot print
dual 500gb 7200rpm hdd's 32mb cache
In the end it comes down to trial & error & finding your own sweet spot,but for the luv of god get yourself an imaging program like acronis or ghost,you can thank me later *winks*
