"Basic" or "Dynamic volume/partition method for HDD?

Hi,

Do you recommend "basic" or "dynamic" volume/partition method in Windows 10?

I plan to format a new 4TB HDD to be used for 3 purposes:

1. A secondary disk for windows paging file. Size = 3xRAM = 50 GB
2. Data drive (mydocs, music, video, photo, downloads, etc.) ~3.45 GB
3. Space for a image of my OS + apps of ~500GB

The OS and apps are on a separate SDD.

Thanks

I'd keep the page file on SSD (you want it on the fastest drive you have) and have one partition on the new drive. There is no need to create a separate partition for system images - they can just go in their own folder.

I've never used dynamic disk partitioning, so can't comment on that. The paging file is what Windows uses for secondary memory so you will see a hit on performance by moving it to the slower hard disk drive (I agree with lx07)

Ok, thanks for the helpful feedback on keeping the image on the same partition as the data files. If I wanted to create a small partition on this HDD as a secondary for the paging file (and/or other temp files), is the dynamic or basic method preferred?

Use basic, not dynamic. Dynamic is mainly for spanning volumes. And subdivide that 4TB drive into at least 2 partitions of 2TB. Sometimes you may run into problems with partitions larger than 2.2TB.

I did not see Navy's post at the time of my last reply, so sorry about that.

With WHS's post above this seems more trouble than it's worth as I do want a very large contiguous space for data and archives, and I don't think two 2TB partitions will be good for max utilization down the road.

In case I wasn't clear, the plan was too keep the primary page file on the SSD system drive but allocate 100GB to this HDD as secondary. This is for running large memory intensive apps such as photoshop, illustrator, cad, and rendering software. For example, Adobe suggests storing the page file on a seperate disc than the application scratch disk. So I think that I will use the system disk for the sole page file, and a small SSD for scratch, temp and cache (no partitions) while using the HDD for data and image backup (no partitions).

Riotubes said:

I did not see Navy's post at the time of my last reply, so sorry about that.

It was actually lx07's post.

Hi,

This is for running large memory intensive apps such as photoshop, illustrator, cad, and rendering software. For example, Adobe suggests storing the page file on a seperate disc than the application scratch disk.

Provided there's always enough space on the primary SSD I can't see why it would have to be on a separate disk which is actually causing extra IO traffic hence slower.

Re dynamic disks, view them as a raid system without raid. I.e. it simply allows you to span multiple drives and view and use them as if they were a single disk.

This also comes with a caveat for if this dynamic connection is broken by say pulling a disk none of the data on it makes any sense since parts of it are missing.



Cheers,

Dynamic disks, provide all of the functionality of the basic disk, plus the ability to span a volume across multiple dynamic disks or stripe multiple dynamic disks to create a larger volume. however, because they are not accessible from operating systems other than the operating system instance that converted the disk to dynamic. This makes dynamic disks inaccessible in multiboot environments and makes recovering data more difficult in the event of partial hard disk failure. You should always use basic disks unless you have a specific requirement that can be met only by dynamic disks.

Thanks whatphoeb.

Fdegrove - the logic was taken from "Windows7 Inside Out" book: "If you have more than one physical disk, moving the page file to a fast drive that doesn’t contain your Windows system files is a good idea. Using multiple page files split over two or more physical disks is an even better idea, because your disk controller can process multiple requests to read or write data If you have more than one physical disk, moving the page file to a fast drive that doesn’t contain your Windows system files is a good idea. But don’t make the mistake of creating two or more page files using multiple volumes on a single physical disk. If, for example, you have a single hard disk that contains volumes C, D, and E, splitting the page file over two or more of these volumes, might actually make your computer run more slowly."

But instability of a partition over 2TB trumps any modest performance boost of managing the page file.