Joel Dahl

I've seen that said elsewhere, and as I posted above, I don't even vaguely
have the technical training to argue one way or the other on that point,
however my past experience proves otherwise.

So, while I'm not challenging you on this point, allow me to describe why my
past experience leads me to believe that moving data onto a separate
partition on the same physical drive improves performance, and perhaps you or
someone else can explain to me the real reason for why this happens.

I had a Windows XP machine with a 40 GB physical hard drive, the entirety of
which was formatted as a 40GB C: drive. I noticed with this machine (and
with other machines I'd had previously) that its performance generally seemed
to slow down over time, the longer I had the machine (and yes, I did have
general system maintainance performed regularly, defragmenting the HD, etc.).
My presumption was/is that as time passed, I created and saved more data
files, so there was more data for the system to have to churn through the
longer I had the computer.

It got REALLY bad when I took my entire CD collection and imported it all
into iTunes (about 15 GB worth). Basic windows processes (booting up,
minimizing or maximizing a screen) would have a noticeable lag with an
hourglass on screen before anything would happen).

A friend suggested to me that I separate my C: drive into a 17GB (the
minimum for XP, apparently) C: drive, and leave the remaining 23GB as a new
D: partition, and transfer the My Documents folder, and all the data it
contained (including my newly bloated iTunes folder, which was the main
offender in slowing down my system) onto drive D:

I did so, and AS SOON as I did, the computer returned to its original,
fresh-out-of-the-box level of performance.

So my question is, if moving my data onto a separate partition on the same
physical hard drive didn't cause the speed-up of my OS, what did?

This story is about my old XP machine. As for my new laptop with Vista, I
can't say for sure if the same rule will prove true (though I've obviously
been assuming that it will). I haven't put a whole lot of data on it yet,
and now that I've moved the Documents folder onto my D: partition, that's
where I'm going to put all my data when I do put lots of data on it.

Thanks for your input! I really appreciate it!

Joel

"Steve Easton" wrote:

> I hate to tell you this, but moving / saving / working with files in another partition on the "Same" drive
> does not speed up anything.
> The only thing it accomplishes is that they're saved if you ever need to reformat the OS partition and
> reinstall.
>
> Using a second physical drive for data file storage and also moving the paging file there "Is" a definite
> performance advantage.
>
> --
>
> Steve Easton
>
>
>
> "Joel Dahl" <JoelDahl@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:C4625BB7-8C88-430B-8167-7A4655C544BA@microsoft.com...
> >I just bought a new laptop with Windows Vista installed. I have a 120 GB
> > hard drive, which I ordered Dell to partition into a 40 GB C drive and an 80
> > GB D drive (with my DVD drive being drive E).
> >
> > So I got the laptop and the partitioning is all done as I requested. Now
> > what I want to do with it is to set it up similarly to the way I had my old
> > Windows XP machine set up, which was as follows:
> >
> > I separated my old XP machine into a 17GB C drive, and a 23GB D drive. I
> > managed to set up my XP operating system so that the "My Documents" folder
> > (and all associated subfolders) was on drive D, while the OS and all
> > applications were installed on drive C, but whatever data files I created
> > were on drive D. The reason I did this was that I had a lot of data on my
> > machine, and having it on the same drive as the OS was slowing the OS down
> > substantially, but the OS performed well when all that data was on a separate
> > drive.
> >
> > What I want is to do substantially the same thing with my new Windows Vista
> > laptop. I want to have the OS and all installed applications remain on drive
> > C, but put my entire user account folder (C:\Users\Joel_T_Dahl) on drive D
> > (my 80GB data partition). Or, if I can't do that, I'd like to move just the
> > major subfolders of my user account (i.e., "Documents," "Music," "Pictures"
> > etc.) onto drive D. I have a lot of music and pictures I want to put into
> > those folders, and before I put them into those folders, I want to move those
> > folders onto drive D, so that the data doesn't bog down my OS.
> >
> > I know I could just deliberately save all my data onto drive D, but most
> > applications save data into these Vista equivalents of the XP My Documents
> > subfolders, and it would be nice not to have those defaults point to a folder
> > that's already on drive D (and not to have to change the default save
> > directory with each new application I install).
> >
> > So in sum, I would like for C:\Users\Joel_T_Dahl to become D:\Joel_T_Dahl,
> > with all the associated settings within Windows Vista changed so that they
> > know what drive path to point to when accessing Joel_T_Dahl and/or any
> > associated subfolder.
> >
> > Or, if I can't move my user account folder off the drive that has the OS,
> > I'd like for
> >
> > C:\Users\Joel_T_Dahl\Documents\
> > C:\Users\Joel_T_Dahl\Music\
> > C:\Users\Joel_T_Dahl\Pictures
> > (etc., etc.)
> >
> > to become
> >
> > D:\Documents
> > D:\Music\
> > D:\Pictures\
> > D:\(etc., etc.)
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > Joel
>
>
>