HDD Advice

[peterb]

Chkdsk /r doesn't really do any more than a full format.

No, but a format in this context is not affecting the physical structure of the disk (unlike a floppy format). It only lays down the filesystem.

Zak's partition theory does work and, unless there is a large area of damaged disk things are stored pretty much the way they are supposed to be on a disk.

That is supposition, it is just convention - although it is how data was stored in the days when hard drives were addressed via the CHS convention. However, as the disk wears, any speed advantage will eventually disappear because defective sectors will be mapped to others elsewhere on the disk. Disk mfrs do arrange the disk mapping to give as even performance as they can across the whole addressed range.

And a newly installed operating system will always appear faster than one that has been installed for a while. I'm not saying it doesn't work, I'm just sceptical about the reasons why it is said to work.[/QUOTE]

Look at things like drive speed tests - they test from outside in (as seen by the OS) and it goes from faster to slower. If the disk just threw stuff anywhere then what would be the point in defragmenting?

You don't know what the drive is actually doing behind the interface. The drive could be read from inside to outside - it doesn't have to tell the OS that. In all probability it is reading from outside in, but the actual physical pattern of the read is hidden from the user. Defragmenting is primarily a logical operation on the file system, to make the file system contiguous, it will also make the logical sectors on the disk contiguous, but the actual physical sector pattern and the mapping to the logical LBA number is known only to the disk. The point is "as seen by the OS" which may not reflect the physical reality.

I'm not saying that the advice to run chkdisk when 'formatting' a disk is incorrect, but the processes you described are logical processes at file system level, not physical ones at disk level.

[s3ds]

I was more thinking of the disk maufactures tools
for the samsung ES tools

[watercooled]

No, but a format in this context is not affecting the physical structure of the disk (unlike a floppy format). It only lays down the filesystem.

I didn't say it did.

You don't know what the drive is actually doing behind the interface. The drive could be read from inside to outside - it doesn't have to tell the OS that. In all probability it is reading from outside in, but the actual physical pattern of the read is hidden from the user.

But what I mean is look at a speed test, HD Tune for example, which tests speed across the surface of the disk - it starts fast, ends slower. While this doesn't mean every sector is in order, most of them are which is important.

[peterb]

I didn't say it did.

Full format does check the drive for bad sectors.

Which was the point I was making - it checks the file system for errors, not the disk surface!

But what I mean is look at a speed test, HD Tune for example, which tests speed across the surface of the disk - it starts fast, ends slower. While this doesn't mean every sector is in order, most of them are which is important.

HDtune tests the disk access across the range of logical sectors, which may (and probably are) organised in the same physical layout that you describe, but you cannot be certain!

But yes, contiguous access is better for performance, and I suspect that the spare sectors are distributed across the disc so that when an in-use sector becomes marked by the disk's operating system as bad, it ensures that the heads don't need to traverse very far to pick up the data from the newly in-service sector.

I was more thinking of the disk maufactures tools
for the samsung ES tools

Yes, they do, but it probably isn't worth it on a new drive, although it might pick up a drive that had been damaged in transit. However I haven't used those tools myself, so I can't comment.




However we are arguing about semantics, and the detail of how a disk works and is of little help to the OP who asked a simple question about formatting his hard drive! (And has probably wandered off to make himself several cups of tea while we argue over the finer points of disk technology!

However on that subject, RAID 0 was mentioned, and IMHO, that probably isn't worth it. If one disk fails, all data integrity across the two disks is compromised, and I'm not convinced that any theoretical or practical performance gain is worth it unless you are using a high performance dedicated controller.

[Kev32]

I find your arguments most enlightening.

I've never really looked into the hardware of a hard drive and even find platters some what confusing. I feel over the last 2 weeks I've expanded my knowledge greatly!

[watercooled]

No hard feelings m8

Yeah also IMHO RAID 0 isn't worth it on a desktop machine. Synthetic benchmarks often show higher throughput but in everyday use it really isn't great - access time doesn't get much better than a single disk and read performance is often worse that a single disk which makes it bad for a system drive because it is read from a lot more than it is written to.

[peterb]

I find your arguments most enlightening.

I've never really looked into the hardware of a hard drive and even find platters some what confusing. I feel over the last 2 weeks I've expanded my knowledge greatly!

Hexus is nothing if not educational!