Speed Difference between C: and D: Hard Drive Partition

Hi,

I recently replaced a hard drive in an old 800Mhz Gateway desktop PC.

The "new" HD is an IDE 20G. I partitioned the HD into two
10G partitions (C: & D. Each partition was formatted as NTFS. I installed
WinXP in both partitions (dual boot system).

I was wondering if there would be a difference in browsing speed if I
installed FireFox 37 in C: instead of D: due to the "geometry" of the
hard drive? In other words, disk read/writes speed may be quicker in
C: partition due to the distance the heads moves across the platters?

Thank You in advance, John

wrote:
Hi,

I recently replaced a hard drive in an old 800Mhz Gateway desktop PC.

The "new" HD is an IDE 20G. I partitioned the HD into two
10G partitions (C: & D. Each partition was formatted as NTFS. I installed
WinXP in both partitions (dual boot system).

I was wondering if there would be a difference in browsing speed if I
installed FireFox 37 in C: instead of D: due to the "geometry" of the
hard drive? In other words, disk read/writes speed may be quicker in
C: partition due to the distance the heads moves across the platters?

Thank You in advance, John

An old computer is no match for Firefox :-)

At one time, Firefox had a setting where you could
use memory to cache web pages, rather than the disk
cache. That would eliminate your "C versus D" argument,
but the speed difference just wouldn't be there. Firefox
is just too bloated from an instructions point of view.
There are too many looping Javascript files, to make
the experience enjoyable.

I did some tests on my old PC recently, and PC133 CAS3 memory
gave 300MB/sec bandwidth, and PC133 CAS2 memory
gave 366MB/sec. That's as measured by memtest86+ .
Even if the Firefox webpage cache is in memory, it
isn't exactly screaming fast. So even if you
eliminated the disk entirely, the memory
isn't all that fast on an old computer.

People quote PC133 * 8 = 1064MB/sec, but it takes
time to open pages on memory. Ordinary transactions
are cache-line oriented. Only a long-burst operation
could get closer to 1064MB/sec and the CPU doesn't
normally do that. Sadly, 300MB/sec is what we get.

The highest overclock I've heard of, is 166MHz on the
PC133 bus. But a small percentage improvement on a
really low number, isn't fooling anyone.

*******

If the Firefox developers were each given an 800MHz
single-core computer, I'm sure that modern Firefox
would run faster than it does now.

Paul

On Sat, 06 May 2017 11:07:12 -0400, Paul wrote:

An old computer is no match for Firefox :-)

When I still use dual core AMD 1.6GHz, even Firefox 26 feel slow and heavy.

If the Firefox developers were each given an 800MHz
single-core computer, I'm sure that modern Firefox
would run faster than it does now.

I'm pretty sure older softwares are much more optimized than nowaways
softwares. Especially before Windows came.

In message , JJ
writes:
On Sat, 06 May 2017 11:07:12 -0400, Paul wrote:

An old computer is no match for Firefox :-)

When I still use dual core AMD 1.6GHz, even Firefox 26 feel slow and heavy.

I find Firefox (also 26!) quite usable on this single core (Also 1.6
GHz!) machine. Also Chrome.

If the Firefox developers were each given an 800MHz
single-core computer, I'm sure that modern Firefox
would run faster than it does now.

(-: And a no more than 1024 × 768 screen ...

I'm pretty sure older softwares are much more optimized than nowaways
softwares. Especially before Windows came.

Yes; I have FLAME.COM (my copy is dated 1999, but I think it's older
than that), which provides a simulation of a fire on the monitor; it is
453 bytes small. (Still runs under XP, though not 7.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

To give you some indication, opinion polls suggest that people who
passionately hate or love country [music] are utterly indifferent to Marmite.
- Eddie Mair, Radio Times 11-17 February 2012

SNIP
An old computer is no match for Firefox :-)

At one time, Firefox had a setting where you could
use memory to cache web pages, rather than the disk
cache. That would eliminate your "C versus D" argument,
but the speed difference just wouldn't be there. Firefox
is just too bloated from an instructions point of view.
There are too many looping Javascript files, to make
the experience enjoyable.

I did some tests on my old PC recently, and PC133 CAS3 memory
gave 300MB/sec bandwidth, and PC133 CAS2 memory
gave 366MB/sec. That's as measured by memtest86+ .
Even if the Firefox webpage cache is in memory, it
isn't exactly screaming fast. So even if you
eliminated the disk entirely, the memory
isn't all that fast on an old computer.

People quote PC133 * 8 = 1064MB/sec, but it takes
time to open pages on memory. Ordinary transactions
are cache-line oriented. Only a long-burst operation
could get closer to 1064MB/sec and the CPU doesn't
normally do that. Sadly, 300MB/sec is what we get.

The highest overclock I've heard of, is 166MHz on the
PC133 bus. But a small percentage improvement on a
really low number, isn't fooling anyone.

*******

If the Firefox developers were each given an 800MHz
single-core computer, I'm sure that modern Firefox
would run faster than it does now.

Paul

Hi Paul,

I found your reply/information very interesting.

BTW,

I used a program I made (I'm an assembly programmer) called
"25MBW" that Writes (generates) 25MB size files. You can adjust
the number of files (each 25MB in size) from 1 to 255 files. The
files contain all zeros (binary).

Both partitions have just about the same amount of free space.
I adjusted "25MBW" to generate 15 files and timed how long it took
to write the 15 files. It took 19 seconds on C: partition, and 22 seconds
on D: partition. I repeated the test after I deleted the files. The results
were around the same, a few seconds faster on the C: partition.

John

wrote:
SNIP
An old computer is no match for Firefox :-)

At one time, Firefox had a setting where you could
use memory to cache web pages, rather than the disk
cache. That would eliminate your "C versus D" argument,
but the speed difference just wouldn't be there. Firefox
is just too bloated from an instructions point of view.
There are too many looping Javascript files, to make
the experience enjoyable.

I did some tests on my old PC recently, and PC133 CAS3 memory
gave 300MB/sec bandwidth, and PC133 CAS2 memory
gave 366MB/sec. That's as measured by memtest86+ .
Even if the Firefox webpage cache is in memory, it
isn't exactly screaming fast. So even if you
eliminated the disk entirely, the memory
isn't all that fast on an old computer.

People quote PC133 * 8 = 1064MB/sec, but it takes
time to open pages on memory. Ordinary transactions
are cache-line oriented. Only a long-burst operation
could get closer to 1064MB/sec and the CPU doesn't
normally do that. Sadly, 300MB/sec is what we get.

The highest overclock I've heard of, is 166MHz on the
PC133 bus. But a small percentage improvement on a
really low number, isn't fooling anyone.

*******

If the Firefox developers were each given an 800MHz
single-core computer, I'm sure that modern Firefox
would run faster than it does now.

Paul

Hi Paul,

I found your reply/information very interesting.

BTW,

I used a program I made (I'm an assembly programmer) called
"25MBW" that Writes (generates) 25MB size files. You can adjust
the number of files (each 25MB in size) from 1 to 255 files. The
files contain all zeros (binary).

Both partitions have just about the same amount of free space.
I adjusted "25MBW" to generate 15 files and timed how long it took
to write the 15 files. It took 19 seconds on C: partition, and 22 seconds
on D: partition. I repeated the test after I deleted the files. The results
were around the same, a few seconds faster on the C: partition.

John

You don't have to resort to that sort of testing, unless
you enjoy it.

At the block level, you can use HDTune to evaluate speed
versus head position. That will demonstrate the 2:1 ratio
between outside diameter and inside diameter on the platter.
This program will work all the way up to Win10, but on
a lot of OSes, the GUI window behaves a bit "weird".
You'll figure this out after you've used it a bit, and
it happens to get pushed to the background. And I don't
really understand what programming property the developer
used, to make it behave that way.

http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

Sample of an older drive, probably an IDE judging by speed.

http://www.hdtune.com/HDTune_Benchmark.gif

And this picture, shows the difference between a
short-stroked drive (Left), versus a regular drive (right).
Whether you get a short-stroked one when you buy the
drive on the left, is "the lottery". The drives are
not all made the same way, and the existence of the
one on the left is caused by "market forces". I have
another one of that model on the left, which has the
usual 2:1 ratio.

http://s29.postimg.org/8b7cj872v/wd500gb.gif

The free version of HDTune has a size limit when
testing, so before deciding half the drives you own
are short-stroked, if a drive is too big, HDTune
isn't actually testing the entire surface. I presume
HDTune Pro (the paid version), fixes this. But for
quick and dirty read-only testing, I like the free
version... just fine :-)

Paul