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Partitioning The Hard Disk Increases Performance And Organization, Even For Today's Casual PC User

Part 5: The Need For Speed

Of course, it doesn't matter how many features a product offers if it's too slow to be useful. In a series of benchmark tests conducted by one vendor of partitioning software, the time it took to resize a FAT 32 partition by roughly 500 Mb ranged from 10.5 minutes to more than an hour. Increasing the size of an NTFS partition by 512 Mb ranged from just over 1 minutes to almost 20 minutes, and resizing a Linux Ext2 partition by 94 Mb ranged from roughly 1 minute to about 7.5 minutes.

Obviously, the time it takes to resize a partition is based on a number of factors, including the size of the drive, the CPU, the amount of RAM and the operating system. But tests like this demonstrate that there are differences in the software products as well, and it might take users some time to compare utility software just as they compare application packages. An analysis of the software the company or user selects should reflect the user's technical capabilities, the flexibility of the software, the specific needs of the task (for example, is your file system supported by the product you plan to buy?) and price. Note that price is the last item mentioned; the cost of these systems utilities range from roughly $50 to $75, so the financial outlay is not huge. However, the differences between the products might be.

To recap, today's giant hard drives are putting the onus of information and disk management into the hands of technical and non-technical users alike. Being able to repartition a hard disk has become almost a required skill for home- and corporate IT managers — even if your home IT manager doubles as homemaker, teacher or entrepreneur.

Flexibility, organizational capability and speed are the names of the game and the product that ties it all together will be the one that wins the hearts and minds of systems managers everywhere. Sun Microsystems Inc.'s chairman Scott McNealy is known to have said, "The computer is the network." Here, you might say "The interface is the key that unlocks the door to new partitions.

About author

Max Lyadvinsky, Director of Engineering at Acronis, Inc., has more than 7 years of experience in software development and project management at such companies as Paragon, Ancud and Acronis.

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