Mon Jun 09, 2003 11:35 am
Performance with 2 partitions depends on many factors. If the partitions are less than half full, and you use both partitions a lot, performance will probably degrade slightly, since the drive will be seeking back and forth between the partitions quite a bit. OTOH, if you can segregate your files such that e.g. larger infrequently accessed files are always kept on the second partition, you will almost certainly see a performance boost, since the files that you do use frequently will be physically closer to each other on the disk.
Also keep in mind that performance of hard disk drives tends to degrade as you move in towards the center of the disk, because fewer sectors physically pass under the head for each rotation of the disk. Yet another reason to keep less frequently accessed files on the 2nd partition.
My preferred partitioning method is to put the OS and program files on the first partition, and my own files on the second partition. This also makes system recovery easier -- i.e., you can simply reformat the first partition and reinstall the OS, without losing any of your own files.
Trying to set up RAID-0 using two partitions on the same disk would be a disaster. It would force the drive to constantly seek back and forth between the two partitions, which would absolutely kill performance. Furthermore, the head actuators in drives that are not intended for use in server environments aren't designed to take that kind of pounding; you could actually kill the drive! I doubt that most RAID-0 software will even let you do it, since there is absolutely nothing to be gained.
