# Short-Stroke: Why, and how...



## eflyguy

Short stroking is the process by which the capacity of a volume is reduced in order to improve drive performance. There are benefits to short stroking any mechanical disk, regardless of whether the drives are used in any type of RAID array.

The platters in a mechanical hard drive spin at a constant speed, but the sectors located at the edge of the platter are stored in approximately the same area as those near the center. As a result, these outer sectors can be read faster (MB/s) than those near the center of the platter. This can be seen in any of the hard drive benchmarking programs, where data transfer rates taper off exponentially as the head moves towards the center of the platters. HD Tune is a popular choice for benchmarking hard drives.










By creating a small partition at the "start" (outer section) of the drive platter, you force the operating system to use only the fastest area of the drive, improving data transfer rates (for both read and write operations.)

An additional benefit of this process is that by limiting the data to a small section of the drive, the head does not need to travel as far to access data, and access times can be reduced significantly.

The effects of this can again be seen in the drive benchmarking tool, where the data transfer rates will now be more consistent across the partition, and access times will drop significantly.

_(note this benchmark is on a RAID-0 pair of drives as opposed to the single drive above - meant to illustrate the more consistent drive transfer rates and subsequent higher average, and noticeable drop in access times)_










There is no specific percentage of drive capacity for best result - every user should decide for themselves how much capacity is required to meet their needs. Partitions ranging from 10-25% are common, and as one would expect, slightly better results can be seen from smaller partitions.

Note: you can partition and use the remaining drive space for additional storage, but be aware that any time that storage is accessed, you will lose the performance benefits of short stroking. In practice, this works well as during most application use, the storage partition is not frequently accessed.

So, to experience the benefits of short stroking yourself, simply create a small partition next time you initialize a drive (this can also be done when building a RAID array, where you can specify the volume size) and install your operating system to this smaller partition. In almost every case, the first partition on a drive will always be located at the outer edges of the platters.

Thanks to the_beast, who has posted much of this information across multiple threads over the past few weeks. I wrote this by distilling a bunch of his posts down to a single document..








..a


----------



## UndertheGun

Nice write up and explanation. You covered it all as far as I can tell at this time. Good job +rep!


----------



## wierdo124

Nice job


----------



## nismo_usaf

interesting


----------



## Firestorm252

thank you for actually explaining what the heck Short Stroking is (aside from innuendo jokes) in the beginning in a concise manner.

I dunno how many articles I've skimmed that don't bother to point that out. totally didn't help when i was trying to figure out what it was in the first place


----------



## BounouGod

Mostly curious about how much this would help with random access times.

If i had 2 500gb spinpoint f3's in raid0 with a 125gb partition on both how much faster would it be?


----------



## -iceblade^

Quote:


Originally Posted by *Firestorm252* 
thank you for actually explaining what the heck Short Stroking is (aside from innuendo jokes) in the beginning in a concise manner.

I dunno how many articles I've skimmed that don't bother to point that out. totally didn't help when i was trying to figure out what it was in the first place

as above.

seems like a great way to get extra performance...


----------



## LiNERROR

too bad hd tune doesn't support volumes over 2tb else i'd post a screenshot


----------



## Old Hippie

Quote:

I wrote this by distilling a bunch of his posts down to a single document..
Uh Oh, Better get the release forms ready!









Good job on the synopsis!









I hope I can keep track of it to point somebody in the right direction.


----------



## H-man

I did this, vista boots a lot quicker.


----------



## MasterShake

Very nice info.


----------



## E_man

Is there anyway to, if I take everything but OS and games off my hdd, to move those applications to only the outer edge without reformatting/reinstalling windows?


----------



## eflyguy

Yes, you can shrink your primary partition then create another with the now unallocated space. Partition Magic will do it, gparted may as well. In theory the OS (Vista or 7) will as well, but they don't allow you to move data around as well as the third-party tools.
..a


----------



## /\/uLL

Great writeup, your concise synopsis made it very easy to understand the basis/fundamentals of short-stroking. +rep

I've always put my OS/programs on their own smaller partition for the purpose of performing fresh OS installs without affecting my storage. Apparently I've been short-stroking my HDDs for a while now without knowing it. Great to know.


----------



## E_man

Quote:


Originally Posted by *eflyguy* 
Yes, you can shrink your primary partition then create another with the now unallocated space. Partition Magic will do it, gparted may as well. In theory the OS (Vista or 7) will as well, but they don't allow you to move data around as well as the third-party tools.
..a

So if I shrink that partition, it will move everything to the outer edge using one of those tools?


----------



## eflyguy

As long as it is the first partition, yes - the "start" of the drive is the outer portion of the platter(s).

Honestly, the access time benefits would still apply if you used the "end" (inner) portion, but you'd need more physical distance to get the same capacity, so the partition would be physically wider and therefore have longer access times..
..a


----------



## Seakros

Yes, GParted is a very fine tool to do this. I first learnt how to use it when creating a double boot system on my netbook for a XP/Ubuntu system.

Anyway, just a quick addition to what eflyguy has said. The reason that the outer parts of the HDDs are read quicker is because they have a higher tangential velocity. v = w*r, so the further the partition is on the disk (towards the outer edges) the faster it will be (just the quick "science" behind it for those who have not gotten there in school yet)

Just a quick question though, in a RAID 0 array, the "apparent" beginning of a partition displayed with, for example, GParted, is going to be the outer edges of BOTH (or whatever amount) the HDDs? No need to worry of it being located on multiple discs?


----------



## eflyguy

Yup - just "staggered" by stripe size - i.e. the first (stripe size) of data is on the first track on disk 0, the second (stripe size) of data on the first track of disk 1, then back again (for a 2-disk RAID-0 array)..
..a


----------



## Seakros

Perfect, sounds logical, thanks for the info


----------



## E_man

Quote:


Originally Posted by *eflyguy* 
As long as it is the first partition, yes - the "start" of the drive is the outer portion of the platter(s).

Honestly, the access time benefits would still apply if you used the "end" (inner) portion, but you'd need more physical distance to get the same capacity, so the partition would be physically wider and therefore have longer access times..
..a

Thanks for the info, I got to try that

+rep


----------



## IntelConvert

+rep for the thread

i am now thinking of doing this, my HDD takes too long, imho, to access saved games and such when im loading games and stuff like that. just dont know if im willing to reinstall XP for it...

do u have to have raid? or can i just create 2 partitions when i install an OS? the first partition being the OS 'drive' and the 2nd partition being the storage 'drive'

after realising there were more posts than i origianlly thought, i might try using one of those programs to move/create partitions to short stroke my HDD, but thats another day.

good info, i will be checking up on this thread


----------



## eflyguy

From the original post:
"There are benefits to short stroking any mechanical disk, regardless of whether the drives are used in any type of RAID array."

..a


----------



## IntelConvert

Quote:



Originally Posted by *eflyguy*


From the original post:
"There are benefits to short stroking any mechanical disk, regardless of whether the drives are used in any type of RAID array."

..a


ya this is what i thought,

i think im going to experiment with this, thanks for the thread!


----------



## eflyguy

Post results!


----------



## IntelConvert

im doing benchmarks for my 3200AAKS using HD tune before i short stroke it, ill use partition magic and see the differences.

the originals seems pretty bad... access time is terrible, CPU usage is like 10% and it peaks really low sometimes. i set this to be the most accurate testing, which took the longest amount of time

graph is attached

edit-
sooooooooo partition magic wont let you do anything unless you pay for it, ill try the other program now....


----------



## IntelConvert

got the partitions taken care of so i have an 80gb OS drive and a 220GB storage drive. the access times are great and transfer rates are sustained above 100mb/s consistently on my OS logical drive and the slower storage drive isnt used much.

great thread! i guess people can see my results and show what this can do. i dont have a particularily fast HDD, but i notice loading times have decreased significantly.

my access time dropped about 5 ms (25%!!!) and my sustained transfer rates are awesome. creating these partitions and then defragging them did wonders for my system!

i dont know how to get HDtune to test just one partition, maybe i cant do that with the trial version. but if you look at the first 25% of the test (starting at the left), this is my "OS drive" and shows very consistent performance. the remaining 75% is where my "storage drive" is located. it is slower, but only needed from time to time.


----------



## Wishmaker

This is a myth. Just like setting number of processors in W7 to 4 to "improve performance".

Quote:

Bottom-line is that the average performance is a weighed arithmetic mean across all zones that is interesting for statistical and drive architectural purposes but has little bearing on real drive performance and absolutely nothing to do with e.g. controller performance. Even within the same model of the same manufacturer, different capacity drives will have different averages, which solely reflects the use or non-use of the innermost tracks and nothing else

A bit of reading before pulling the trigger won't hurt ... google is your friend.

Quote:

Run some applications that are disk limited like compression, game loads, encoding, PCMark HDD Suite, etc, show us what we will gain by using this method! This is the kind of ignorance I have battled when I was doing some work for Seagate many years ago when PATA drives with shorter platters were measured against SATA drives with longer platters and the conclusion was that PATA was noticeably faster than SATA (in that case it was Maximum PC).


----------



## Old Hippie

Quote:



This is a myth. Just like setting number of processors in W7 to 4 to "improve performance".


Sooo you are saying that short stroking doesn't increase a mechanical HDs performance in any of it's parameters?


----------



## Wishmaker

Quote:



Originally Posted by *Old Hippie*


Sooo you are saying that short stroking doesn't increase a mechanical HDs performance in any of it's parameters?










 If your metric is the average between fastest and slowest and you eliminate all but the very outermost tracks, then your drive will, on average, *look faster on paper.* If you have too much extra unwanted space you don't need, you decrease the drive size to only use the outermost drive tracks hence reducing seek times by a large margin, which means the performance perceived where any seek is involved, is enhanced. The actual drive performance remains largely fixed but the faster performance comes from reduced access latencies with the much smaller head movement involved. *Synthetic apps will in these cases largely exaggerate the benefits but they are not apps I rely on since I don't run them as my work.* Simple heavy read/write daily operations will be enough to show me any benefits I might gain from such a technique. These benefits are not on par with what synthetic apps are saying.

This "tutorial" like the Tom's hardware article is misleading and gives a false impression that a hard drive "with short platters" is faster than a hard drive with "longer platters". What about the controller lads? By that logic, my example with an analysis done by maximum pc still stands :

Quote:



... when PATA drives with shorter platters were measured against SATA drives with longer platters and *the conclusion was that PATA was noticeably faster than SATA* (in that case it was Maximum PC).



We've stumbled across a PARADOX! The PATA controller was never faster than the SATA controller, yet the "short stroking" process on the PATA drive showed the opposite? Some people should research a bit more before believing every trick out there.

This (short stroking) is actually an extremely commonly believed online "enthusiast" myth. You'll see all sorts of strange "complex looking" explanations given by purported "computer engineering/physics experts" on fora on this topic

IOMeter due to it relying entirely on the IOps metric is one of the only benchmarks to show high gains, since it supposedly relies on data access times to generate its results. Honestly, I am really suspicious of this benchmark - its throwing out very strange and uselessly synthetic MB/s results in many of my tests. Result fluctuations which real world tests do not corroborate.


----------



## PCCstudent

I have been reminded that this is OCN and we search for performance gains in all systems. But I ask, is any gain in performance (even .1 of 1%) worth any amount of effort?

What I am getting at is can we qualify when the gain is worth the effort, somehow?

Don't get me wrong I do like exploring these type of modifications as they increase my overall understanding of how systems work and are a lot of fun.


----------



## Old Hippie

Quote:



If you have too much extra unwanted space you don't need, you decrease the drive size to only use the outermost drive tracks hence reducing seek times by a large margin, which means the performance perceived where any seek is involved, is enhanced. The actual drive performance remains largely fixed but the faster performance comes from reduced access latencies with the much smaller head movement involved.


This is a great explanation short-stroking and by it's own admission seek speed is enhanced.

Not all drive parameters can/will be enhanced with this method but it's doing what it's supposed to do.

IMHO the only failure to short-stroking would be the expectation that it would make a magnitude of difference.

PCCstudent has hit the nail on the head....how much effort vs how much gain makes it "worth it" to you.


----------



## MasterShake

Quote:



Originally Posted by *Wishmaker*


If your metric is the average between fastest and slowest and you eliminate all but the very outermost tracks, then your drive will, on average, *look faster on paper.* If you have too much extra unwanted space you don't need, you decrease the drive size to only use the outermost drive tracks hence reducing seek times by a large margin, which means the performance perceived where any seek is involved, is enhanced. The actual drive performance remains largely fixed but the faster performance comes from reduced access latencies with the much smaller head movement involved. *Synthetic apps will in these cases largely exaggerate the benefits but they are not apps I rely on since I don't run them as my work.* Simple heavy read/write daily operations will be enough to show me any benefits I might gain from such a technique. These benefits are not on par with what synthetic apps are saying.

This "tutorial" like the Tom's hardware article is misleading and gives a false impression that a hard drive "with short platters" is faster than a hard drive with "longer platters". What about the controller lads? By that logic, my example with an analysis done by maximum pc still stands :

We've stumbled across a PARADOX! The PATA controller was never faster than the SATA controller, yet the "short stroking" process on the PATA drive showed the opposite? Some people should research a bit more before believing every trick out there.

This (short stroking) is actually an extremely commonly believed online "enthusiast" myth. You'll see all sorts of strange "complex looking" explanations given by purported "computer engineering/physics experts" on fora on this topic

IOMeter due to it relying entirely on the IOps metric is one of the only benchmarks to show high gains, since it supposedly relies on data access times to generate its results. Honestly, I am really suspicious of this benchmark - its throwing out very strange and uselessly synthetic MB/s results in many of my tests. Result fluctuations which real world tests do not corroborate.


Better access times are still a good result of doing this. Of course its not close to what ssd's produce but wouldn't you say this improvement does help?


----------



## Wishmaker

Quote:



Originally Posted by *eflyguy*


It does help. Either he's intentionally trolling, or completely missing the point.
Move on. Nothing to see here..








..a



Insulting me will not change the fact that you did not research more thoroughly about this issue. I took the time to read what you wrote, a well raised person would actually read what other people write too. I showed with clear examples and explained in a few posts short stroking and real life benefits. You saw something about short-stroking, you saw the Tom's Hardware article and you wrote this up. I give you points for the effort but not for the validity of the tutorial. You are misleading people and being cocky won't change this. You can continue to be ignorant and live in your little world. What is sad is that some people come to OCN and learn crap like this.


----------



## 98uk

OK, so when I next install Windows, I can do this on my Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB?

What sort of size partition are we talking I have to create? Can I do this in Windows installer?


----------



## Wishmaker

Quote:


Originally Posted by *Old Hippie* 
Might as well report me too cause I agree with him!







LMAO!

Short stroking is a very easy concept to understand and just because your opinion doesn't coincide with the synthetic apps results....

doesn't mean everyone agrees with you.

You'd better report this post also!










At the end of the day, if you lot want to fall of the cliff nobody is stopping you. You seem to be another user who does not read what other people post. If you use synthetic apps all day long, then yes, you will see the short stroking gain in the *higher numbers when the bench finishes*. Start using real world applications where the "short stroke" gain is not inflated (this is what synthetic apps do) and things are different. Not for the blind of course ...

While you are at it, make sure you tell windows how many cores you have because it will "significantly" reduce your boot up speed and make windows run faster!!!
















***Another myth and eventhough it was debunked by Microsoft people still believe it. "Short-stroking is no different : myth, folktale with no tangible gain in THE REAL WORLD. If you lot bench all day then I advise you short stroke everything. Also, use IoMeter because this is the software that inflates the scores the most when you short - stroke.****


----------



## prosser13

Please guys, don't argue - *debate*.

If you've got proof on either side, then post it. So far from reading this thread, I'd be on the side that short stroking does increase performance simply because the benchmarks show that it is higher, and I haven't (yet) seen any proof that these benchmarks inflate the results.

There is also no need to tell people you've reported their post; it just leads to flame wars.


----------



## Old Hippie

Quote:



While you are at it, make sure you tell windows how many cores you have because it will "significantly" reduce your boot up speed and make windows run faster!!!


I have no idea what you're talking about but maybe after my cliff fall it'll probably become crystal clear.


----------



## MasterShake

Quote:



Originally Posted by *Old Hippie*


I have no idea what you're talking about but maybe after my cliff fall it'll probably become crystal clear.


lol he's talking about the boot options in ms config.


----------



## Seakros

Well, just to add my two measly cents: 
I am actually going to support Wishmaker.
Although I concede that benches show that short-stroked HDD's are faster, in my experience and understanding, it does not really make a difference. I actually tested the difference with a timer some time ago (lol, yea, I know, ghetto). I had my family rig setup with a single large partition, timed the boot up and the loading times of a couple of games (repeated it another time just for certainty) and wrote down the results.

I then used GParted to make my partitions smaller (just to the very limit of what I was using, maybe 50MB spare) and rebooted for the timings. After loading Windows and the same couple of games a couple of times, I checked the times... and they were virtually identical. I think that I even had a result where the slowest short-stroked time was slower than the fastest regular time.

Anyway, this made more or less sense to me, because if I recall, when GParted made my partition smaller, it basically took 10 secs to do it. It didn't move any files, it just placed the delimiter of how much space was allocated to the partition to a earlier spot on the HDD.

Anyway, I know that is a really sketch test (on my families Dell XPS desktop, not my sig RiG) and probably doesn't mean much to you guys, but there it is anyways.

I actually came back to this thread with another purpose in mind.... does anybody know how to modify partitions with GParted but when playing around with a RAID 0 array? I am trying to get a dual boot on my new RiG, but GParted doesn't seem to recognize the array. It doesn't even see Windows 7, it just tells me that there are 2 blank HDD's....


----------



## eflyguy

Quote:


Originally Posted by *Wishmaker* 
I showed with clear examples and explained in a few posts short stroking and real life benefits. You saw something about short-stroking, you saw the Tom's Hardware article and you wrote this up

You quoted other peoples comments and provided no links to the source.
Your first comment in this thread was "it's a myth".
You provided no data of your own.

I, on the other hand, created an array with old and slow Maxtor DiamondMax drives, shortstroked to 10% of available capacity, and benchmarked to demonstrate a significant reduction in access times, which is the primary benefit of short stroking.

I have never seen a TomsHardware article on this topic - I got most of this from a member here, as clearly stated in the original post:

Quote:


Originally Posted by *eflyguy* 
Thanks to the_beast, who has posted much of this information across multiple threads over the past few weeks. I wrote this by distilling a bunch of his posts down to a single document..









Finally, The second point to this thread is to explain to people what it is, and how to set it up, driven by the multiple posts per day asking this exact question. I'm not advocating everyone sacrifice a significant portion of their hard drive to improve performance.
..a


----------



## dennyb

I am probably one of the least knowledgeable persons following this thread. I tend to agree with shortstroking as being beneficial. Even if it is not that much of a benefit in real world applications(which I think it is)it certainly makes a difference when one needs to restore or format and reinstall the OS.
Not losing everything else due to formatting the whole drive is in my view a great benefit.

Just my view. Feel free to correct me if you like.


----------



## Sheyster

I'm running a 50GB 10% short-stroked 500GB WD. It's very fast, even to the point that I've decided to delay getting an SSD for a while longer until prices come down a bit.


----------



## MrDeodorant

Quote:


Originally Posted by *Seakros* 
Well, just to add my two measly cents:
I am actually going to support Wishmaker.
Although I concede that benches show that short-stroked HDD's are faster, in my experience and understanding, it does not really make a difference. I actually tested the difference with a timer some time ago (lol, yea, I know, ghetto). I had my family rig setup with a single large partition, timed the boot up and the loading times of a couple of games (repeated it another time just for certainty) and wrote down the results.

I then used GParted to make my partitions smaller (just to the very limit of what I was using, maybe 50MB spare) and rebooted for the timings. After loading Windows and the same couple of games a couple of times, I checked the times... and they were virtually identical. I think that I even had a result where the slowest short-stroked time was slower than the fastest regular time.

Anyway, this made more or less sense to me, because if I recall, when GParted made my partition smaller, it basically took 10 secs to do it. *It didn't move any files*, it just placed the delimiter of how much space was allocated to the partition to a earlier spot on the HDD.

See, you already know why this didn't make a difference. Short-stroking forces a hard drive to only use the fast parts of its storage space. It has a secondary benefit of keeping all the data within easy reach, which eliminates the lengthier seek times. That's it. It doesn't actually make a hard drive faster, it just removes the slow bits, which improves the average speed.

The reason a short-stroked OS drive is nice is because the read heads are always in the vicinity of the OS files. They aren't looking at lolcat pictures in the slow zone.


----------



## prosser13

Quote:



Originally Posted by *dennyb*


I am probably one of the least knowledgeable persons following this thread. I tend to agree with shortstroking as being beneficial. Even if it is not that much of a benefit in real world applications(which I think it is)it certainly makes a difference when one needs to restore or format and reinstall the OS.
Not losing everything else due to formatting the whole drive is in my view a great benefit.

Just my view. Feel free to correct me if you like.


You can partition the drive without short stroking to give the same benefit of being able to format part of the drive


----------



## Old Hippie

Quote:



Not losing everything else due to formatting the whole drive is in my view a great benefit.


That's the main reason I went with a seperate OS drive many moons ago.

Even before the small OS drives (Raptors) became fashionable I'd short stroke a larger drive. It wasn't called short stroking at the time, just partitioning the first 80-100GB of the drive and letting the remainder unused.

After the origional Raptors came out there was no need to partition and waste space.

The origional reason for running a seperate OS drive was because I'm completely self taught on computers and have never been shy about pushing a button just to see what it would do.

I've probably screwed-up @ 9 zillion Windows installs and still keep a fresh copy of Vista loaded on a seperate drive and ready to go.....just in case!


----------



## eflyguy

Once you get into the habit of storing data anywhere but on your OS drive, it makes system crashes and OS rebuilds a lot less painful.
..a


----------



## goobergump

Great info for people looking to speed up seeks and reads. +rep


----------



## StormX2

I completley forgot to shortstroke my raid 0 setup here..

Im wondering though.. with windows 7 pro, a few Halflife Games on Steam, Warhammer online. How much space should I allow myself =?

I was thinking 100 - 125gb ?


----------



## eflyguy

Are you running them already on another system? If so, how much space do they take?
Vista with all office apps is ~40GB.
..a


----------



## spice003

how do you short stroke a raid0 before you install an os on it, is there a free tool that i can use in dos, also i have 2 500gb hds, how big of a partition should i make, i only like 150-200GB. and if i understand correctly i just need to make a partition for the size i need and it will automatically use the outer section?


----------



## eflyguy

When you build the array (in the RAID controller BIOS) you choose how much of the disk to use. You don't need tools.
..a


----------



## spice003

oh i see, thanx


----------



## spice003

so here is an update, i have this 320gb 2.5" seagate hd laying around, and today i was messing around short stoking it. the best result i got from it was a .2 sec drop in access time, everything else stayed the same +- 5MB in transfer rate. i used partition magic to short stoke it, i tried it at the beginning and at the end of the drive, tried 64/32/16k cluster size. first tried 30gb partition then 10gb partition. speed stayed the same every time, i used hdtune 2.55 free ed., i dont know maybe i'm doing something wrong here. also when i short stroked my raid 0 setup i only got a 3 sec if not less drop in access time.


----------



## vi3t_boy

okie, i currently have 3x 500gb WD black in Rai0. If I short stroke it to 100gb which mean im losing 1400gb out of those drive?


----------



## vi3t_boy

ok i just figured out that i can create another volume by using the other extra Gbs


----------



## vi3t_boy

thanks for the guide. my access time went from 12.5ms to 7ms. very impressive.


----------



## TehStone

Quote:



Originally Posted by *vi3t_boy*


thanks for the guide. my access time went from 12.5ms to 7ms. very impressive.


In real world terms, how important is that 5.5ms? 12.5ms seems pretty good to me...

You're getting things loading up 5.5ms faster then or is that 5.5ms multiplied over the course of a load session to the individual items which you're loading? I'm not understanding the real world results that such a small change in access time would endow.


----------



## spice003

does anyone else wanna help me with my problem, or short stroking doesnt really work on 2.5" drives?


----------



## eflyguy

Quote:


Originally Posted by *TehStone* 
In real world terms, how important is that 5.5ms? 12.5ms seems pretty good to me...

It's massive! It's over 40% reduction, and (as any owner of an SSD can validate) access times actually have a far more significant impact on overall system performance.
..a


----------



## pingu666

couple of quick questions from me :x
Ive just setup two 1tb f3 samsungs in raid 0, gone for 64k stripe size, currently its one 2tb partion, 64k ntfs allocation thingies xD, ICH9R onboard, and windows 7 x64 :]

theres nothing on the drives at the moment, but i intend to use it for games mostly

but i guess i should make a smallish partion for swap file, and scratch disk purposes (photoshop)...
Ive got 8gig of ddr2 ram, and the old rule of thumb was 2.5 x the amount of ram, right ?








should i use a different stripe/allocation size for the swap file partion ?
and its perfectly ok to make the adjustments in the windows disk/storage thingy thats buried in control panel?


----------



## pingu666

(3rd drive is my c drive)

going off that, i should have a short stroke partion of 27gb ?


----------



## dennyb

I would make two partitions on the C drive, The first would be 80gb/160gb ,depending on your needs for OS and daily apps, the rest for games /music,etc. I use an 80gb partition for OS and apps

Why do you want the OS on the slowest drive tho? Why not partition the fastest drive for the OS and storage?


----------



## pingu666

its not a new build








http://drnathan.teamhackaday.com/software/raidfix/ ftw








I only really run firefox, so im not i can be bothered to reinstall everything for that minor a speed bump xD.


----------



## dennyb

Quote:


Originally Posted by *pingu666* 
its not a new build








http://drnathan.teamhackaday.com/software/raidfix/ ftw








I only really run firefox, so im not i can be bothered to reinstall everything for that minor a speed bump xD.

Well, I'm not at all familiar with the operation in your link,as this is my first RAID. I have had it for 2 weeks,so I'm still pretty green and my views on how to accomplish things are "suspect" to say the least.

But







I still would not have all of that Raid array on those new drives just used in a secondary fashion. My approach would be to partition the new raid and Install the OS and any apps on the first partition and use the rest for storage. Then I would use the old slower drive for backup duty. In the end it is up to you and I'm sure you can get better guidance from some of the regular posters on the HD forum. Good luck whichever way you decide to go


----------



## pingu666

it probably would be, but im just lazy at the moment xD


----------



## kRze.baLLiN!

Hello I was wondering if I am short stroking correctly. I picked up 2x 640GB blacks and set them up in Raid0 in my raid bios. (128 stripes) Then I started to install Win7 and partitioned the raid0 drive to 250GB and installed windows there. I left the rest of the drive unallocated. I'm not sure if I did this correctly?

Attched is a SS of HDtune, after fresh install. Also I noticed that it shows the whole raid volume (1.16GB) instead of the 250GB partitioned drive its on.

So not sure if I did this right







.. any help? thanks.


----------



## theCanadian

This is bull.

I throw a ball several different ways and find that I average 50MPH. Then I throw out all the slow pitches and find that I average 60MPH, that doesnt mean I can throw a ball any faster than I was originally able to.

Sorry if you don't understand my analogy.


----------



## cybershark5886

What's funny is that I have inadvertently been using this technique for years for an entirely different reason. Back when I used to run Windows 98 and total drive crashes were frequent my Dad and I would format our drives with two partitions *C:* and *E:* with *C:* as a small primary partition with the OS and anything else non-OS related that was important went on the "Data Partition" *E:*. Several times the *C:* drive would get corrupted (the Windows system files) and would crash but we could easily extract the data from the intact *E:* partition.

Today I still use this for my home XP system and install almost all of my programs to *E:\\Program Files* (Games, common applications, everything) and let *C:* only hold the OS files so that it remains generally undefiled. However I made the mistake last time of only allocating 10GB for the *C:* drive and quickly ran out of room. So this time I partitioned it 40/120 between *C:/E:* on my 160GB drive, tending more toward the 25% mark, but the idea is still the same and currently only 12GB is used in the *C:* drive. Nice and clean overall. And if there happens to be a performance boost because of "short stroking" as well all the better.


----------



## grunion

Quote:


Originally Posted by *kRze.baLLiN!* 
Hello I was wondering if I am short stroking correctly. I picked up 2x 640GB blacks and set them up in Raid0 in my raid bios. (128 stripes) Then I started to install Win7 and partitioned the raid0 drive to 250GB and installed windows there. I left the rest of the drive unallocated. I'm not sure if I did this correctly?

Attched is a SS of HDtune, after fresh install. Also I noticed that it shows the whole raid volume (1.16GB) instead of the 250GB partitioned drive its on.

So not sure if I did this right







.. any help? thanks.

You have to set the stripe in the Raid bios, not Windows.

Like so


----------



## kRze.baLLiN!

Quote:


Originally Posted by *grunion* 
You have to set the stripe in the Raid bios, not Windows.

Like so

I notice you're using an Intel raid bios, my board would be using a Nivida raid bios. Would I have the same opitions to create stripes like Intel? I cannot seem to find them.


----------



## ryuken

so basically what ur doing is just not using the slower part of the hdd right?


----------



## eflyguy

That's part of it, but more importantly, you're limiting head movement to a smaller portion of the drive, so that decreases the maximum sweep it has to take to get to data, therefore decreasing access times.

Access times, not raw throughput, make the most noticeable difference in performance in most cases, which is why booting from a slow (transfer speed) USB flash drive, for example, can seem to be as fast as a hard drive. Flash drives still have sub-millisecond access times.
..a


----------



## crashovride02

This works great!! Thanks for the info and REP+ to you!! Here are my 2x WD 2500AAKS drives. 500GB full use RAID0 and then 250GB and then 175GB!


----------



## spinejam

two sammy F3 1TB drives in RAID0 w/ 250gb partition for OS:


----------



## kRze.baLLiN!

Quote:



Originally Posted by *spinejam*


two sammy F3 1TB drives in RAID0 w/ 250gb partition for OS:

http://i593.photobucket.com/albums/t...Raid_0_Vol.png


Beautiful.


----------



## mothrpe

Single drives benefit too I guess, cool.


----------



## eflyguy

Absolutely.
Access times do not change between RAID and non-RAID, so the benefits are the same.
..a


----------



## linkin93

How exactly do i do this? I've got a WDC WD25 00AAKS-00SBA drive (AKA WD Caviar Blue 250GB)

I don't mind loosing some space for faster reads/writes and access times, should help when i record with FRAPS


----------



## AzzKickr

Just wanted to say that short stroking is not just creating a small partition for the OS on the beginning on a large hard drive but defining block sizes and formatting in low level.

With a proper short stroked drive you cannot acces the unused space in any way, it will not even be visible in partition managers.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...-hdd,2157.html


----------



## FloppyNL

Hey guys, I just had a question: Can I short stroke my single WD6401AALS? (See PC specs in Sig). I have read some stuff on the internet, but I can't figure out.

Thanks in forward


----------



## TheDreadedGMan

Quote:



Originally Posted by *AzzKickr*


Just wanted to say that short stroking is not just creating a small partition for the OS on the beginning on a large hard drive but defining block sizes and formatting in low level.

With a proper short stroked drive you cannot acces the unused space in any way, it will not even be visible in partition managers.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...-hdd,2157.html


That's one way of short-stroking, using a RAID controller and a drive manufacturer low-level formatting utility... however just using Disk Management or other formatting program to format the drive to a smaller capacity then the maximum performs the same function.

Access times... If they were not important why would anyone buy an SSD?

Also they make it easier to understand IOs/second
Basically the hard drive head has to physically move to each file you would like it to access... Some files are fairly small and are wholly contained in only a few sectors... with these small files, the access time plays the majority role in the amount of time required to read/write them

DISCLAIMER: all the numbers quoted here are pulled out of thin air as an EXAMPLE... use benchmarks to measure your actual drive.

So for example, if a program or the operating system needs to read/write 100 small files, then it will need to move the hard drive head around 100 times to access all those files

so 100 x say 12ms (avg hard drive)
1200ms
1.2 seconds

Say those files were each less then 4KiB
In this case, the hard drive has spent 1.2 seconds reading/writing 400KiB of data...
so 0.4MiB/second

That 300MB/second SATA interface is not looking like so much of a bottleneck now is it?

However, say you're reading a 1000MB file...
In this case there is 12ms to access the start of the file... then at say 100MB/second about 10012ms (10 seconds) to read the whole file... so for a SEQUENTIAL file, the MB/sec number is important...

However the average *size of files* on your drive is probably significantly less then 1000MB, probably less then 100MB.

Also this means that RAID arrays, however impressive MB/s numbers you get, the access times are not reduced from a single drive...
so that 4KB file still takes 12ms to reach

however with Short-stroking, the access time can be reduced! which means the majority of files on (say an OS or app drive) are significantly faster to access, which is why a short-stroked drive "Feels" faster since the response time is much better...

Remember my example with 100 small files:
at 8ms that's only 0.8seconds... a huge difference from 1.2 seconds, bringing the drive speed to 0.5MiB/second (for random small files)

Why are mechanical drives faster then 0.4 or 0.5 MB a second, (I think maybe 0.9 or so in 4KB random benches)

Well it doesn't always take 12ms to access the next file, sometimes the files are close together on the drive...
12ms would be the "average" seek time..

And while i've got some of your non-TL;DR azzez still reading, this is why Defragmentation also reduces access time, if that small file is in 4 pieces then it takes 4 strokes to access it....

And imagine 0.1ms access time, pop quiz anyone actually read this, post time taken to access 100 x 4KB files, and the total "MB/s" to read them


----------



## TheDreadedGMan

Ok Access times again... in an analogy

The files are notebooks, the hard drive is a house, and the read head is the person.
The person could be a quick reader/writer (fast sequential MB/s) and get good numbers sitting at the desk in the study with a large notebook...

However say she is a slow runner, and needs to access a notebook in the bedroom... The time taken to run to the bedroom and open the notebook is the access time (seek time)

So for example, if you closed off most of the house, and the reader/writer moved into only the lounge and moved all the notebooks into the lounge then it's the equivalent of short-stroking... Less time spent running around the house trying to get to each notebook...


----------



## Onkelhitman

Hi,
one Question.

Sorry for my bad language but still learning using better english.

Short stroke means that i reduce my capacity of the hard drive or using a part of my hard disk.
Does it function if i have a 1,5TB Hard Disk, creating a 40GB Partition first and than let the rest unformatted? I want to use Truecrypt for crypt my data, and you cant see there is a formatted drive. You have to mount it first and than access to it. So its shown in Windows as unformatted but having data on it. I would mount the greater part if i want to my data, and than it is not important for me, if THAN the transfer-rates and access time would be bad because of using the whole hard disk.

But if im using Windows i would not mount it, and so i would only use the 40GB partition. Is THAT short stroke or im shaking things together?

Gz
UncleHitman


----------



## eflyguy

That would effectively be short-stroking, yes.

The OS is only going to try and use the partition it can see. The only time you would access the other portions of the disk is when you access data on the truecrypt volume.
..a


----------



## Onkelhitman

And how can i measure it?

HDTune can handle but only if you click on Short Stroke. If i make 1 Partition 40GB with which Tool i can see the difference?

And how can i set the Partition in the front of the HDD? I used the Windows 7 Partitioner to create a 40GB Volume, is this enough or should i use a special tool for it?


----------



## Roadhog

First off, I personally believe there would be a gain by stroking a drive, as would be if you partition a drive as well. A procedure I have done since the mid nineties.

Now this is for "*grunion*"
First off, thanks for posting that pic, it has explained more of what I intend to do with a system build I am collecting parts for. Especially as the two motherboards I have narrowed down to purchase, both use the Intel RAID controller, the ICH10. I have been doing a crap load of research as it's been years since I ran RAID so for times like this, I can ask specific questions.

I noticed "*grunion*", that all your stripes are 128. Is it possible to run different stripe sizes and further more, any advantage to do so. I am aware that a lot of this depends on how the User, myself, intends on using the RAID array.

And I noticed we think alike, as I intend on doing three stripes myself as a way to organize by access priority.

Now I have directed these questions to "*grunion*", but all replies are welcome as I am here to learn.

Thanks in advance.

Hoggy


----------



## grunion

Quote:


Originally Posted by *Roadhog* 
First off, I personally believe there would be a gain by stroking a drive, as would be if you partition a drive as well. A procedure I have done since the mid nineties.

Now this is for "*grunion*"
First off, thanks for posting that pic, it has explained more of what I intend to do with a system build I am collecting parts for. Especially as the two motherboards I have narrowed down to purchase, both use the Intel RAID controller, the ICH10. I have been doing a crap load of research as it's been years since I ran RAID so for times like this, I can ask specific questions.

I noticed "*grunion*", that all your stripes are 128. Is it possible to run different stripe sizes and further more, any advantage to do so. I am aware that a lot of this depends on how the User, myself, intends on using the RAID array.

And I noticed we think alike, as I intend on doing three stripes myself as a way to organize by access priority.

Now I have directed these questions to "*grunion*", but all replies are welcome as I am here to learn.

Thanks in advance.

Hoggy

Bump for the block size question.
IDK the answer, set it and forget it, that's me








I've never compared the performance differences between block sizes.


----------



## Roadhog

The reason I am so curious about stripe size is as follows:

I am thinking of doing a 60 meg stripe at 64, this will contain only my OS, period. Next would be a 300 gig stripe at 128. And the third stripe to be all remaining space for archive files set at 128 as well.

The smaller stripe means more blocks to scan, but I have to wonder with a 60 gig and only OS, if this would work to my advantage.

But the huge question is, can I use different stripe sizes. If not, then the rest is just a moot point.

Hoggy


----------



## MooMoo

Hmm, where I can set up these short strokes? when installing Windows (the partition size)?


----------



## eflyguy

Yes, or if using RAID, when you build the array - it asks how large you want it to be.
..a


----------



## onoz

Sorry to open this super old thread, but just wanted to say thanks and I'll be trying this when finals are over! Anything to improve boot up time =)


----------



## Vbp6us

I'll be trying this on my next reformat. I like my speeds at the moment with my partitions.


----------



## mLink

Nice write-up.
I noticed the second image says it's in Raid 0, the first one doesn't..
So, did you make a small partition _and[_ put it in raid 0 for the 'faster' example?
No offense or anything, but it doesn't seem like legit results unless both examples are in Raid0, or neither are.


----------



## eflyguy

The second image is meant to show the "flat" transfer rates & the reduction in access times, which are not affected by RAID. Good point, though - I'll clarify.


----------



## jana999

Hi all, thx for the informative posts. I have a seagate 500gb 7200.11 hdd which i want to install my OS on and i have a wd 1.5tb green for storage,games and non essential programs.
I am going to do a fresh install of windows 7 on my 1tb seagate, so do i short stroke it before the install itself or during? Sorry I dont know much abt raid n stuff. How and when can I short stroke my 500gb seagate? Do i have to use the bios? So wat would be a good/optimum size to ss a seagate to? I dont really need so much space for os n programs actually, 25gb-50gb sufficient.

Very sorry if I am asking questions alrdy answered, thx for putting up with me.


----------



## eflyguy

That belongs in its own thread, but you say you have a 500GB and a 1.5TB, and you want to install on a 1TB?







I assume you mean the 500GB..

If you want to short-stroke the 500GB, you simply tell windows to create a smaller partition on the drive during installation. If you can live on 50GB (I'd suggest going to 64GB to give you a little breathing room) just allocate that much when Windows installation asks how large you want to make the partition.
..a


----------



## jana999

Quote:



Originally Posted by *eflyguy*


That belongs in its own thread, but you say you have a 500GB and a 1.5TB, and you want to install on a 1TB?







I assume you mean the 500GB..


Yup I mean 500gb, sorry for not starting a new thread, not too sure of thiw forum's posting culture.

Quote:



Originally Posted by *eflyguy*


If you want to short-stroke the 500GB, you simply tell windows to create a smaller partition on the drive during installation. If you can live on 50GB (I'd suggest going to 64GB to give you a little breathing room) just allocate that much when Windows installation asks how large you want to make the partition.
..a


Thx for the quick reply, I will try 64gb then. Not much of a difference between 50 vs 64gb then?


----------



## TheDreadedGMan

Quote:



Originally Posted by *jana999*


Yup I mean 500gb, sorry for not starting a new thread, not too sure of thiw forum's posting culture.

Thx for the quick reply, I will try 64gb then. Not much of a difference between 50 vs 64gb then?


Well the closer to you get to the middle of the disk the slower it gets, so you could short stroke to 400GB but the gains would not be that impressive... 10% is a bit extreme, but will result in good performance, 100GB is 20% short stroke... so 64 is an odd number but anything would do, you could even choose 75...


----------



## hbfs

Thanks for the thread! It's the reason I decided to short stroke my Spinpoint F3.
I have only a single drive and two partitions set up, one for OS and one for storage. My short stroke partition doesn't show up in the HD Tune dropdown, so I just checked Short Stroke and here are the results:

Without short stroke:









Short stroked partition:


----------



## eflyguy

Good data!


----------



## man from atlantis

short stroke is boss, great thread..










http://www.overclock.net/hard-drives...ack-500gb.html


----------



## Imrac

short stroking is awesome, my 2 500gb F3s raid 0. Thought I would bump the thread =)


----------



## _Chimera

Quote:



Originally Posted by *Imrac*


short stroking is awesome, my 2 500gb F3s raid 0. Thought I would bump the thread =)











I've ordered 2 of the spinpoint F3s for Raid0, is the first partition (stroke) the best performance one?


----------



## Imrac

I believe so. At work right now, but I will try and remember to check when I get home.


----------



## eflyguy

Read the original post. The outer portion of the platter has the highest transfer rate.
..a


----------



## _Chimera

Quote:



Originally Posted by *eflyguy*


Read the original post. The outer portion of the platter has the highest transfer rate.
..a


My question was if the first partition (the first you create) was the best performance (located in the outter portion), and I asked because in the original post in says "In almost every case...":

Quote:



Originally Posted by *eflyguy*


...In almost every case, the first partition on a drive will always be located at the outer edges of the platters.


So I was asking a person with the same drives than me to be sure. Thanks for the input btw =)

EDIT: Yeah, but kinda messed up things with partition/portion/stroke Y.Y, english not my first language.


----------



## Imrac

Just double checked, it is the case with my drives/motherboard combo.


----------



## _Chimera

Quote:


Originally Posted by *Imrac* 
Just double checked, it is the case with my drives/motherboard combo.


Thank you very much Imrac !


----------



## ACHILEE5

Quote:


Originally Posted by *_Chimera* 
is the first partition (stroke) the best performance one?

Yes








Plus, have a look through the post I made a while back Short Stroke "Side by side Results" to give you an idea what results to expect


----------



## the_beast

Quote:


Originally Posted by *_Chimera* 
My question was if the first partition (the first you create) was the best performance (located in the outter portion), and I asked because in the original post in says "In almost every case...":

So I was asking a person with the same drives than me to be sure. Thanks for the input btw =)

EDIT: Yeah, but kinda messed up things with partition/portion/stroke Y.Y, english not my first language.

Just to clear this up -

The location of the platters is not drive specific, the first platter _created_ will always be on the outer edge of the platters, and will thus be the fastest one.

_However_, if you create a partition (or array in your RAID BIOS), then create a second partition, then delete the first and boot into Windows (or your OS of choice), the first partition that Windows see will _not_ be in the optimal place on the platters.


----------



## PCSarge

i should do this to this laptop... the acess times are horrible as hell especially cause its a 5400 rpm drive

though i was smart... it came with a seagate, i put a 320gb WD in it


----------



## Durdle Class A

Can I short stroke without reinstalling simply by creating a partition with the Disk Management and moving the OS folders into that partition?

If so, which folders do I move to the small partition?


----------



## ACHILEE5

Quote:


Originally Posted by *PCSarge* 
*i should do this to this laptop*... the acess times are horrible as hell especially cause its a 5400 rpm drive

though i was smart... it came with a seagate, i put a 320gb WD in it

I did it to my laptop for two reasons








1. For performance! Better access times and to use the fastest part of the disk!
2. When I format and reinstall Windows, my stuff on the second partition stays put









Quote:


Originally Posted by *Durdle Class A* 
*Can I short stroke without reinstalling simply by creating a partition with the Disk Management* and moving the OS folders into that partition?

If so, which folders do I move to the small partition?

No, but you might be able to "Shrink" the partition you have Windows on now! Then make a second partition on the new unallocated space for storage


----------



## TheDreadedGMan

Quote:


Originally Posted by *Durdle Class A* 
Can I short stroke without reinstalling simply by creating a partition with the Disk Management and moving the OS folders into that partition?

If so, which folders do I move to the small partition?

No, but as the ACHILEE5 said you should be able to "Shrink" the partition in Disk Management, if you're using Win 7 (maybe also in Vista?)

Quote:


Originally Posted by *ACHILEE5* 
I did it to my laptop for two reasons








1. For performance! Better access times and to use the fastest part of the disk!
2. When I format and reinstall Windows, my stuff on the second partition stays put









No, but you might be able to "Shrink" the partition you have Windows on now! Then make a second partition on the new unallocated space for storage









+1
If Shrinking doesn't work well enough, use a hardcore defrag program to consolidate the files onto the first part of the disk before shrinking.


----------



## Imrac

Quote:


Originally Posted by *TheDreadedGMan* 
+1
If Shrinking doesn't work well enough, use a hardcore defrag program to consolidate the files onto the first part of the disk before shrinking.

This

If you are unable to shrink the partition in windows, use "GParted" Its a great utility (Linux based live CD).


----------



## Durdle Class A

Ok, I'm going to short stroke my Windows C: drive to 80 GB from 500 GB total size, is this too small for OS and other files or is it way more than enough?

And another question, when I select to short stroke when installing Windows 7, 80GB C: (OS Drive), 385GB D: (My Data Files), and the rest for Windows system reserved, my Program Files folder is still on the C: drive right? And it can't be moved to other partitions right? So when I install programs, I have to manually set the directory to be in my D: (Data) partition right?

Anything else that I should do after installing Windows with short stroked C: partition?


----------



## ACHILEE5

Quote:



Originally Posted by *Durdle Class A*


Ok, I'm going to short stroke my Windows C: drive to 80 GB from 500 GB total size, is this too small for OS and other files or is it way more than enough?

And another question, when I select to short stroke when installing Windows 7, 80GB C: (OS Drive), 385GB D: (My Data Files), and the rest for Windows system reserved, my Program Files folder is still on the C: drive right? And it can't be moved to other partitions right? So when I install programs, I have to manually set the directory to be in my D: (Data) partition right?

Anything else that I should do after installing Windows with short stroked C: partition?


When installing Windows, make the first partition 80GB and 7 will make the 100MB partition! Then make the you other partition









Then install programs to C:\\ where they should be. Then they benefit from the Short Stroke!
And just use the other larger partition for Storage









That way all your programs will be in the fast lane on you HDD









So at least, that's what I did with my laptop


----------



## repo_man

Bump. Trying this now.


----------



## onoz

Sorry for bumping such an old thread. Has anyone used this, and if so, what are your results?


----------



## Trigunflame

Don't have any graphs to show you, but yes, partitioning works effectively on traditional HDDs.
OS as the first & any other partitions after it in order of priority (speed).


----------



## djsi38t

I did this with a caviar black laptop hd in my little acer,speeded it up considerable.


----------



## ACHILEE5

Quote:


Originally Posted by *djsi38t* 
I did this with a caviar black laptop hd in my little acer,speeded it up considerable.

Same as with my laptop








I did 25% for OS, 20GB for a bit of storage, and the rest I have encrypted with TrueCrypt


----------



## jimmys_

I got a little confused. How the hard drive writes data? Starting from the inner sector and going to the outer or the other way around? So, if I'm formating a disk and I'll make partitions, the first partition that I'll create will be faster than the last or the other way around?


----------



## the_beast

starts at the outer edges of each platter in turn, gradually moving inwards. The first partition is fastest.


----------



## delphix

Attached are 3 images. Don't have the old (full stroke) on my HDD, but It's a Western Digital Corp. Caviar Black 7200rpm 1tb.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136284

Other two images are an external 1tb 7200 over esata...*
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822149123

*just to show the performance gains of a similar drive @ full benchmark vs. short stroke (technically) the same RPM's/speeds (granted its 90mb/secish) access times diffeer between drives though :|

Quote:



Don't have any graphs to show you, but yes, partitioning works effectively on traditional HDDs.
...


This is a non RAID array setup, by the way...


----------

