Hard drive is much slower after partitioning

Hardware HDD's & SSD's
1

I'm using a single 750gb harddrive in my system, split into a 600gb and 100gb partition. I installed windows on the 100gb partition and use the 600gb for games and storage. My reason for doing this is so I could reinstall windows often and not have to backup all my files, by just wiping the 100gb partition.

Windows takes longer to start/shutdown, games take a long time to load, and opening and closing programs is sluggish. My system was much faster when it was just one partition.

Could It be that windows thinks the partitions are separate drives, and is taxing the hd twice as hard? First time trying something like this so any advice would be appreciated.

 

(Also I moved from 8gb of ram, to 4gb, after partitioning so maybe that had something to do with the slow down...)

2

It depends on where the partition physically is on the drive.

If its at the start of the disk (usually the out most edge of the disk) this is very odd.

However, if it is at the end of the disk (inner most edge) then this is expected due to the fact that it is a spinning disk.

So how did you partition the disks and with what parameters?

3

I used windows disk management create the 600gb partition (It was plugged into a different pc). I dont think I set any parameters, It just asked for the size, name, format, of the partiton. Then, the 100gb partition I created during the windows installation.

 

4

Yup, there it is. Your operating system is now residing on the slowest part of the drive. The drive heads also has to jump around more than before between game and system files.

Fix it with some inexpensive SSD.

5

 

Anyone know of a program, that can rearrange the boot partition towards the outer-disc?

When I built my new pc,I put all my budget into cpu/gpu, and had to use my laptops ram and harddrive to achive my budget. An ssd will eventually make its way in the build, just not now...

6

Basically you should reinstall windows, partitioning windows to the faster region of the drive but also realize that no matter how to partition the drive, you will see a slow down due to the new distance between the windows and the rest of your files. Please note than the closer you can get the first faster partition with windows on it to the size of windows, the faster the drive will perform. Though this is not recommended because Windows needs space to cache files and expand due to updates. Best performance you will see if you dont partition at all. 

Faster than that is to use more than one HDD. Your best bet is just to invest in a cheap SSD and install everything on your HDD.

You can get a budget 32gb SSD for $46 US but I wouldnt recomend anything less than 60, 120gb I would say you should pick up. SanDisk Ultra Plus 128gb for $58. 

7

I ended up repartitioning the 750gb hd back to just one partition, and I put a 40gb sata hd I had laying around as my boot drive. The speed is better than before, although an ssd upgrade is still on my wishlist :p

Thank you all for replying :)