Recording, do i need to partition my hard drive? Options

[mssj]

I have just bought a powerbook g4, I plan to use it also as a recorder for live gigs. do I need to partiion the 80 gig harddrive, or can I use all the frive space mixed with the other data ?

/Stefan

[grg144]

Disk partitions are not like pie wedges or like cutting a pie in half - they consist of groups of concentric cylinders. The way partitioning effects performance is to force the heads to travel back and forth radially, which takes time. If you stay within one partition, partitioning does not affect performance. The reason that a separate hard drive is advantageous is that the recording process can use its own set of heads while all the other software is using the partition where the software is loaded, which may or may not take up the entire original drive.

Optimum recording requires the read/write head of the hard drive to be actively touching the disc as much as possible. Partitioning forces the head to come off of the disc for half of every revolution. so by partitioning, you've effectively turned your 7200 rpm hard drive into a 3600 rpm drive because it's only writing half of the time.