Run TS12 from OS partition, or another?

[Approach_Medium]

Hi;
I just set up a new system, and now running Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit on a new HDD, WD Caviar Black 1TB on SATA 3.
I have 3 partitions on the drive, and the OS is running from the 1st partition.
I don't expect there would be any performance boost if I were to run TS12 from a different partition on the same physical disk as the OS.
I do have a second HDD installed, but it is only SATA 2.
Eventually will add a SSD and run TS from that, but until then, I just want to get best performance.

Thanks for your advice

FW

 

[johnwhelan]

Performance wise it is better not to use partitions. When you use them each partition is on a different bit of hard drive. Hard drive specs talk in terms of average track to track but the difference between two adjacent tracks and two tracks further apart is considerable and by using partitions you are increasing the probably distance the heads have to move.

There are two delays when reading a hard drives the first is rotational faster drives do better here and track to track. By keeping the head over the tracks you're interested in you can keep the track to track numbers down.

If the operating system needs to read from the disk the head has to be in that zone, if Trainz needs something then the head has to physically move to the other zone or partition.

Partitions are useful for reinstalling the operating system with a format whilst preserving data or Trainz downloads that are on another partition.

Putting Trainz on the second hard drive would be a better option. That way the heads stay on the last most recently read track for the operating system and for Trainz.

SATA II / III normal drives see little difference, the bandwidth on SATA II is more than the drive can provide unless its reading from the drive's cache. Even with SSD drives SATA III doesn't provide that much advantage, the SATA II Intel SSD drives still provide a very respectable performance.

Cheerio John

 

[William0d0]

I have 2 WD Caviar Black 1TB drives.

When I first installed windows 7 I forgot to set them up as a RAID 0. Before starting over again I installed TS12 to the second drive for comparison purposes.

After I redid everything RAID 0 I noticed the game loaded faster that way even though the OS and the game were on the same logical drive now.

The only advantage I can think of for partitioning would be to install Trainz onto a partition located on the outer tracks.
Since the outer tracks have more sectors then the inner tracks and the discs RPMs are constant, the outer tracks are the fastest part of the drive, but only if the drive doesn't have to bounce back and forth to other partitions.

 

[Approach_Medium]

I think I'll do a little experimentation here. I probably should remove the two additional partitions from the 1TB drive, and resize the OS partition to the whole drive (I think I can do that without doing a re-install).
Then I can install TS on both the primary (OS) drive, and the secondary (data) drive and see if I notice any difference.

Thanks for the advice

FW

 

[William0d0]

I think I'll do a little experimentation here. I probably should remove the two additional partitions from the 1TB drive, and resize the OS partition to the whole drive (I think I can do that without doing a re-install).
Then I can install TS on both the primary (OS) drive, and the secondary (data) drive and see if I notice any difference.

Thanks for the advice

FW

The only way I know to change partitions without formatting the drive is to use Partition Magic. I use to have it and it worked great for changing partitions.