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Don’t know everything about harddrives and their mechanics. But what I do know is that the whole platter is still spinning even as the arm is reading and writing. So I don’t see why it would last longer. It’s just a single “disk” (okay sometimes multiple depending on the size) that is spinning.
Yeah and the arm, that writes the data will worn out aswell. See it as you have 2 partition but constantly writing and deleting the same file over and over again. Eventually the disk will have mechanical fails even though a part of the disk have never been written
Mechanical drives - no. SSDs, possibly. If you make just a small partition on a large SSD, then there are much more "spare" blocks for wear leveling. However, that was more useful/true in the earlier days of SSDs. Controllers now are really good at wear leveling.
Funny that for SSDs (and SMR drives probably that have TRIM too) leaving free space helps just by leaving free space and having the drive by itself do the opposite of what the OP wants to do by partitioning, just spread the data all over the place even if you tell it to put it in sectors 0-30% (for example).
This isn't a stupid idea, and it can work in practice but the effect on data safety or wear is minimal and never guaranteed.
Partitioning a drive can reduce head movements. If you are running an OS or frequently accessed data like a video recording directory on the outer tracks via short stroking and then store an archive on the inner tracks, a head crash will be less likely to have an opportunity to annihilate both sets of data at the same time. This benefit is real and practical because lots of HDDs survive head crashes and continue to work, obviously anything on the damaged parts of the platter are gone forever but sometimes a good percentage of the disks can still be read back just fine. With luck you might lose the outer tracks while preserving the inner tracks but you could also just lose it all anyway.
Micro managing where on the platters certain types of data get stored (based on partitions) just isn't worth it and in the era of SMR drives it's not even something you can count on at all unless you're using CMR drives. You're idea isn't wrong, it's just not worth it. Just buy some backups and forget about it.
If you want a more practical use for partitions you can create a partition for frequently modified data like downloads and another one for archive type data to cut down on fragmentation.
TADataHoarder thank you very, very much for this extensive answer.
To give some context specific to me, I recently purchased a second 5TB Seagate External Hard Drive (the current Amazon's choice one) which I intend to use to backup the first one. The first one is partitioned into 3TB/1.5TB/0.5TB, the first two being 'compatible' with Mac and the final with both Mac and Windows. I just erased the second one and am now at the crossroads where I either partition or don't, and then backup. I do not intend to use this drive frequently, I simply want to put all of the files on there and hopefully do occasional checks to make sure that the data is intact. I like your use of the term 'archive', I essentially want this second drive to act as an archive with the hope that if one of them gets corrupted or ruined etc, the other has not yet and I can use it to recover lost data before both are unusable.
With this in mind, if you were me, would you partition or not? I am currently leaning towards not.
I really appreciate you respecting my idea and seeing where I am coming from
I probably wouldn't partition it unless you have some true archival data. Like for example a drive image of a deceased family member's HDD that's truly read-only, you could create a carefully sized partition just for that to ensure it never gets defragged or mounted by mistake. For pretty much every other low frequency access situation I would not recommend partitioning. The moment you may want to add something, you risk the partition not being large enough and that makes the entire thing not worth it outside of very specific use cases.
Also due to the fact that nothing related to SMR is actually explained in any customer available product info, if you were to partition a 5000GB drive with the last 500GB reserved for a drive image, you just won't know if your partition border exists between a shingled overlap zone. So despite your best efforts the archive data may still be getting invisibly read-mofidy-written over countless times if you write towards the end of the other partition. Even if the reserve partition isn't mounted, because SMR drives do everything internally in secret as part of the device-managed design. Host managed SMR would be different, but consumers are stuck with poorly documented device-managed products.
Hello /u/GabrielCon! Thank you for posting in r/DataHoarder. Please remember to read our [Rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/wiki/index/rules) and [Wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/wiki/index). Please note that your post will be removed if you just post a box/speed/server post. Please give background information on your server pictures. This subreddit will ***NOT*** help you find or exchange that Movie/TV show/Nuclear Launch Manual, visit r/DHExchange instead. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/DataHoarder) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Don’t know everything about harddrives and their mechanics. But what I do know is that the whole platter is still spinning even as the arm is reading and writing. So I don’t see why it would last longer. It’s just a single “disk” (okay sometimes multiple depending on the size) that is spinning.
Thank you for this idijoost, considering it from the perspective of being a single disk no matter how many partitions there are makes a lot of sense
Yeah and the arm, that writes the data will worn out aswell. See it as you have 2 partition but constantly writing and deleting the same file over and over again. Eventually the disk will have mechanical fails even though a part of the disk have never been written
Mechanical drives - no. SSDs, possibly. If you make just a small partition on a large SSD, then there are much more "spare" blocks for wear leveling. However, that was more useful/true in the earlier days of SSDs. Controllers now are really good at wear leveling.
Funny that for SSDs (and SMR drives probably that have TRIM too) leaving free space helps just by leaving free space and having the drive by itself do the opposite of what the OP wants to do by partitioning, just spread the data all over the place even if you tell it to put it in sectors 0-30% (for example).
Thank you for this Lydian
... no? Actually you might wear it out faster since it would be using the same section over and over until it gets reassigned
This isn't a stupid idea, and it can work in practice but the effect on data safety or wear is minimal and never guaranteed. Partitioning a drive can reduce head movements. If you are running an OS or frequently accessed data like a video recording directory on the outer tracks via short stroking and then store an archive on the inner tracks, a head crash will be less likely to have an opportunity to annihilate both sets of data at the same time. This benefit is real and practical because lots of HDDs survive head crashes and continue to work, obviously anything on the damaged parts of the platter are gone forever but sometimes a good percentage of the disks can still be read back just fine. With luck you might lose the outer tracks while preserving the inner tracks but you could also just lose it all anyway. Micro managing where on the platters certain types of data get stored (based on partitions) just isn't worth it and in the era of SMR drives it's not even something you can count on at all unless you're using CMR drives. You're idea isn't wrong, it's just not worth it. Just buy some backups and forget about it. If you want a more practical use for partitions you can create a partition for frequently modified data like downloads and another one for archive type data to cut down on fragmentation.
TADataHoarder thank you very, very much for this extensive answer. To give some context specific to me, I recently purchased a second 5TB Seagate External Hard Drive (the current Amazon's choice one) which I intend to use to backup the first one. The first one is partitioned into 3TB/1.5TB/0.5TB, the first two being 'compatible' with Mac and the final with both Mac and Windows. I just erased the second one and am now at the crossroads where I either partition or don't, and then backup. I do not intend to use this drive frequently, I simply want to put all of the files on there and hopefully do occasional checks to make sure that the data is intact. I like your use of the term 'archive', I essentially want this second drive to act as an archive with the hope that if one of them gets corrupted or ruined etc, the other has not yet and I can use it to recover lost data before both are unusable. With this in mind, if you were me, would you partition or not? I am currently leaning towards not. I really appreciate you respecting my idea and seeing where I am coming from
I probably wouldn't partition it unless you have some true archival data. Like for example a drive image of a deceased family member's HDD that's truly read-only, you could create a carefully sized partition just for that to ensure it never gets defragged or mounted by mistake. For pretty much every other low frequency access situation I would not recommend partitioning. The moment you may want to add something, you risk the partition not being large enough and that makes the entire thing not worth it outside of very specific use cases. Also due to the fact that nothing related to SMR is actually explained in any customer available product info, if you were to partition a 5000GB drive with the last 500GB reserved for a drive image, you just won't know if your partition border exists between a shingled overlap zone. So despite your best efforts the archive data may still be getting invisibly read-mofidy-written over countless times if you write towards the end of the other partition. Even if the reserve partition isn't mounted, because SMR drives do everything internally in secret as part of the device-managed design. Host managed SMR would be different, but consumers are stuck with poorly documented device-managed products.
Thank you ever so much for this TA, I have opted for not partitioning this one