Which partion has fastest data recovery?

[jim.mar]

If I divide a hard drive innto three partions, C, D, & E, which partion has the fastest read write time.  Do I have any control over this?  Should the OS go onto the fastest partion?

[Allan]

Assuming it's a relatively new drive they will all be pretty much the same, though the partition nearest the center of the disk (c:) will be ever so slightly faster. By default the OS will go there, but there is absolutely no way you would ever notice a difference regardless of where you put it.  If you have two hd's, putting the pagefile on the drive that does not contain the OS will provide a slight performance boost. But again, given the speed of today's drives and the amount of installed ram, any such increase will be marginal.

[jim.mar]

Excuse my ignorance but what is the page file??

[Allan]

Pagefile is virtual memory. It acts as pseudo-ram additional on the hard disk (obviously not as fast as actual ram) - the OS "pages" (swaps) files in and out as needed (in fact, in earlier Windows versions it was called a swap file). If you're not familiar with it don't worry about it. The OS will set it at a default size and location that will be fine. If you do have a second hard drive post back and I'll walk you through moving it (which really isn't necessary anyway). If you want to learn more about it there are about a million Google entries for it - here's one of the better ones: http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php

[jim.mar]

Thanks ADG: Yes I know what virtual memory is.  Never connected it with Page File.  My machine has a habit of picking up some kind of parasite that slows it down.  Sometimes when i am working on a spreadsheet or just surfing the net, it wil go off by itself and do (sho knows what ) for 20 or 30 seconds.  Then it comes back and picks up where it left off. So I decided to do some refurbishing.  The hard drives are about five years old so I thot I would change them.  I am in the process of changing out my old 80 Gb master hard drive with a 750 Gb Sata driven hard master drive, and my old 80Gb Slave drive (where i  keep all of my music memory) with another old but unused, 80 Gb hd on IDE drive.  I intended to partion the drives thus:
Drive 1 Part C.......OS and applications
Drive 1 Part D.......Non personal data
Drive 2 Part E.......Music storage
Drive 2 Part F.......Personal data

Drive 2 is in a "Hot Swap Box" so that I can lock it up while for security when I travel.

Bottom line, Yes i would be interested in having you walk me thru on how to assign the page file for best speed, however, I am traveling right now (using my son's computer) and will not be back at my home station until the 19th of Aug.  Could I contact you then for a walk thru??

Thank you very much for your help.  JIM

[Quantos]

The partition at the beginning(outside of the physical platters) of the drive will have the fastest access times for read and write.

[jim.mar]

Would that be partion C, or E?   I assume it would be C.   Thanks for looking, JIM

[Quantos]

Yes, you would definately want to make that the root.  There is software that will let you modify that, but I don't recommend it.

[jim.mar]

Good, thank you very much.

[Allan]

By default, c: is the outside partition (not sure what you mean by the root - each drive has a root, a drive can't be a root).  

And I'm more interested in this "parasite". What makes you think it's malware? Do you use a good AV and keep the definitions current? What are the precise symptoms?

[Allan]

Oops - I just noticed in my first post above I said the partition nearest the center of the disk is fastest and clearly I should have said the nearest to the edge of the disk. Sorry. Still, as I said your c: drive IS the closest to the edge.

[jim.mar]

By default, c: is the outside partition (not sure what you mean by the root - each drive has a root, a drive can't be a root).  

And I'm more interested in this "parasite". What makes you think it's malware? Do you use a good AV and keep the definitions current? What are the precise symptoms?

I don't quite know how to define it.  Very often, when I am working on the machine (Online or off)  it will sudenly stoop responding to my keyboard or mouse and goes off and does something else.  When I check the windows task manager, it shows that the CPU is very busy and RAM usd is fluctuating but nothing visable is happening on the monitor. No little hourglass icon, not movement of the curser, nothing.   Then after 20 or 30 (or maybe longer) seconds, it comes on and carries on as before.   It does remember the keytrokes that I have put in while it was off doing it's own thing.

I assumed it was a parasite because it would stop happening for a while when I reformatted my hard drive.  But that is a pain.  Then it comes back again.   I was thinking maybe I was removing something critical when I used Ccleaner.

My antivirus is AVG and my Firewall is Zonealarm.

I  used to use Trendmicrow and Avast but they were both painfully slow.  I have two GB of ram.  Thinking about expanding that but my machine is so old that I am leary of mixing up the RAM chips.  Thanks for looking,  JIM

[Allan]

I'm guessing it is not malware. What you need to do is open task manager to the processes tab and sort on the CPU column with highest usage at the top (double-click on "cpu" at the top of the column). Next time the machine stutters take a look and see which process is chewing up the cycles.

[jim.mar]

Yeah, good thought.  I'll try that.  I usually do not know what processes are going on anyway but i'll give it a ho and let youknow.   Thanks a bunch,  JIM

[Quantos]

By default, c: is the outside partition (not sure what you mean by the root - each drive has a root, a drive can't be a root).  

And I'm more interested in this "parasite". What makes you think it's malware? Do you use a good AV and keep the definitions current? What are the precise symptoms?

I'm referring to the partitions.