Author Topic: Should I partition hard drive?  (Read 2779 times)

Offline mbbphoto

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Should I partition hard drive?
« on: June 01, 2017, 08:51:38 AM »
Traditionally I have kept my data separated into different Volumes by year. Often two or three volumes on a hard drive.
I now have about a dozen of these volumes on 4 drives...
When I open Photo Mechanic or ask it to sort I have to wait while it reindexes all these volumes.
I have recently purchased an 8tb drive for older archives.
Is there any speed advantage (or disadvantage) to just keeping it as one monster drive with about 6 years worth of data.
I would still clone often and keep backups etc

I am running a Mac with Yosemite...PM latest build

Thanks in advance

Marc
Marc

Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: Should I partition hard drive?
« Reply #1 on: June 01, 2017, 09:07:43 AM »
Marc,

Traditionally I have kept my data separated into different Volumes by year. Often two or three volumes on a hard drive.
I now have about a dozen of these volumes on 4 drives...
When I open Photo Mechanic or ask it to sort I have to wait while it reindexes all these volumes.
I have recently purchased an 8tb drive for older archives.
Is there any speed advantage (or disadvantage) to just keeping it as one monster drive with about 6 years worth of data.
I would still clone often and keep backups etc

What do you mean by "I have to wait while it reindexes all these volumes"?  PM never has had any drive indexing features.

-Kirk

Offline mbbphoto

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Re: Should I partition hard drive?
« Reply #2 on: June 01, 2017, 10:30:38 AM »
Marc,

Traditionally I have kept my data separated into different Volumes by year. Often two or three volumes on a hard drive.
I now have about a dozen of these volumes on 4 drives...
When I open Photo Mechanic or ask it to sort I have to wait while it reindexes all these volumes.
I have recently purchased an 8tb drive for older archives.
Is there any speed advantage (or disadvantage) to just keeping it as one monster drive with about 6 years worth of data.
I would still clone often and keep backups etc

What do you mean by "I have to wait while it reindexes all these volumes"?  PM never has had any drive indexing features.

-Kirk

I'm sure my terminology is weak.
If all my drives are attached there is a pause when entering PM while the system scans the drives for PM to access (or whatever it is).
No fault of CameraBits but a MacOS thing???
Will partitioning help hinder or make no difference
tx
Marc
Marc

Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: Should I partition hard drive?
« Reply #3 on: June 01, 2017, 01:50:12 PM »
Marc,

Traditionally I have kept my data separated into different Volumes by year. Often two or three volumes on a hard drive.
I now have about a dozen of these volumes on 4 drives...
When I open Photo Mechanic or ask it to sort I have to wait while it reindexes all these volumes.
I have recently purchased an 8tb drive for older archives.
Is there any speed advantage (or disadvantage) to just keeping it as one monster drive with about 6 years worth of data.
I would still clone often and keep backups etc

What do you mean by "I have to wait while it reindexes all these volumes"?  PM never has had any drive indexing features.

I'm sure my terminology is weak.
If all my drives are attached there is a pause when entering PM while the system scans the drives for PM to access (or whatever it is).
No fault of CameraBits but a MacOS thing???
Will partitioning help hinder or make no difference

Ah.  The Navigator accesses all mounted volumes in order to build its tree.  If you have drives that have spun down (energy savings mode) then they can indeed take time to spin up before they're accessible.  Having multiple partitions on a single disk won't exacerbate that since it is one physical drive that has to spin up.

That said, there is a preference you can change.  Right-click on any item in the Navigator.  Choose Preferences... from the contextual menu.  Uncheck the box that is labeled "Always check sub-folders for folders on local disks".  This may help somewhat but won't keep the Navigator from at least getting the list of mounted disks which will hit them up for initial volume information.

-Kirk

Offline mbbphoto

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Re: Should I partition hard drive?
« Reply #4 on: June 01, 2017, 02:54:40 PM »
Marc,

Traditionally I have kept my data separated into different Volumes by year. Often two or three volumes on a hard drive.
I now have about a dozen of these volumes on 4 drives...
When I open Photo Mechanic or ask it to sort I have to wait while it reindexes all these volumes.
I have recently purchased an 8tb drive for older archives.
Is there any speed advantage (or disadvantage) to just keeping it as one monster drive with about 6 years worth of data.
I would still clone often and keep backups etc

What do you mean by "I have to wait while it reindexes all these volumes"?  PM never has had any drive indexing features.

I'm sure my terminology is weak.
If all my drives are attached there is a pause when entering PM while the system scans the drives for PM to access (or whatever it is).
No fault of CameraBits but a MacOS thing???
Will partitioning help hinder or make no difference

Ah.  The Navigator accesses all mounted volumes in order to build its tree.  If you have drives that have spun down (energy savings mode) then they can indeed take time to spin up before they're accessible.  Having multiple partitions on a single disk won't exacerbate that since it is one physical drive that has to spin up.

That said, there is a preference you can change.  Right-click on any item in the Navigator.  Choose Preferences... from the contextual menu.  Uncheck the box that is labeled "Always check sub-folders for folders on local disks".  This may help somewhat but won't keep the Navigator from at least getting the list of mounted disks which will hit them up for initial volume information.

-Kirk
Thanks Kirk,
as always I learn something from you!
Marc