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Subject: Re: Should I Partition the Harddrive for Chess Program and Tablebases?

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 11:42:28 06/03/04

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On June 03, 2004 at 05:42:57, Peter Skinner wrote:

>Partitioning a large drive does help in speed for sure. I have many drives in my
>system and _all_ are partitioned into smaller partitions except my 250gb drive
>that I juse purchased and that was for tablebases alone.
>
>I use about 240gb currently, and I am downloading quite a few more tonight, and
>during the day tomorrow. Once I finish downloading I should have roughly around
>400GB of tablebases. I am betting more programs will be supporting the 6man tbs
>other than Hiarcs and Crafty.
>
>My "main" (80GB as well)drive is set up like this:
>
>C:(20gb) - All applications. Even my chess programs.
>D:(35gb) - Stored databases, chess games, and zips of programs.
>e:(20gb) - Music, videos, pictures, and an image of the C drive
>
>Then I have more drives dedicated to strictly tablebases. I find it easier that
>way, and fragmentation is very low, if any at all.
>
>If anything ever happens I just format the C, and install the image from the E
>drive, and everything is set to go. Instead of installing Windows over and over,
>the image takes roughly 25 mins to install, instead of hours re-installing the
>OS and all my programs.
>
>Take my advice and invest in a good imaging program like Norton Ghost, or
>PowerQuest Drive Image Pro. I purchased both, and they're worth more than their
>weight in gold. I don't know what I would do without them. Also a good defragger
>like PerfectDisk, or DiskKeeper will keep everything nice and tidy.
>
>Peter

I can't answer for windows, but for unix this is no longer a good idea
(partitioning the drive) if performance is the issue.  The only unix reason is
to separate file systems so that a file in one filesystem can't grow so large
that it consumes all disk space since a file can't grow outside of its original
creation filesystem.

Unix is very good with its concept of "cylinder groups", which does a very good
job of laying out files for optimal performance, without needing manual operator
partitioning...





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