Cistron wrote:
Shamgar wrote:
I hardly ever use more than 5GB of my system partition, even with majority of apps installed. I am currently using less than 4GB. However, I make my Windows partition ~12GB to be on the safe side. I find it hard to believe that most users need more than 20GB for their OS partition, it seems like such a waste of space. But that's just me I suppose

. Perhaps with people running multiple virtual machines and software getting more bloated with every release, that could be the reasons for the more than necessary disk space. That and accumulation of browser cache, downloads and free/shareware which people don't clean up and uninstall.
"Take the rubbish out, son!"Well, try windows vista and be amazed by the space it occupies. My system partition is 40GB on a WD320AAKS with a mere 3GB of space left. Installation includes MS Office 2007, Adobe CS4 Design Standard, three games (biggest probably NWN) and a few tiny programmes (AntiVir, VLC, ImgBurn, ...). I have already deactivated the system restore shadow copies, otherwise Vista fills the partition almost completely.
I can understand that on Vista as it has a well known appetite for disk space. With many large programs and games on the system partition, you definitely do need to allow enough space. Some people prefer to put their APPS and GAMES on separate partitions to the OS to keep an OS image file as small as possible.
halcyon wrote:
Short stroking is not the same as multiple partitioning.
Short stroking is the same as placed single partition of a limited size.
It needs to be a single partition, i.e. you do not place any other partitions on it, which you access and which totally kill the performance increase of the short stroke partition.
Also, the location of the partition matters, this is obvious from the original article.
This is basic, but from reading above it appears maybe not all have properly understood this.
And yes, I have multiple-partitioned my drives since 1991 using a similar technique, and gained the benefits, but it's still not same as short stroking by making a single small partition at the outer edge.
Okay, maybe some of us have got confused somewhere along the line. But, if you mean by short stroking a drive is to make use of the fastest part of the drive by making a single partition, I have also done that before. The rest I left as unallocated space simply because I had no need for it. But when I did eventually need the full capacity, I made further partitions from the unallocated space, and then the effect of short stroking is lost at that point. I hope I have understood this correctly.
For most users using a standard HDD (not SSD--whole different story), I argue that the benefit of short stroking is not as important as useable disk capacity. If you know you never need that ~596GB useable space from your 640GB drive, then it's no harm in partitioning it off to 80/160/320GB if that's all you will need.