Partitioning your system drive: still a bad idea with an SSD?

[John Hewat]

Hi everyone,

I am now a MacBook Pro user with a brand new 240GB 6Gbps OWC SSD inside it.

For all sorts of reasons, I need Windows on this machine, and previously, I have had Windows installed on the stock, 3Gbps SSD in the optical drive bay.

What I'd prefer is to install Windows on a second partition of my faster SSD and use the second drive as scratch and storage.

But Harm's wonderful guide here states:

Rule 1: NEVER partition a disk. You may ask why? First of all, it does not increase disk space, it just allocates the space differently. However, the major drawback is that for a partitioned disk the OS must first access a partition table at the beginning of the disk for all accesses to the disk, thus requiring the heads to move to the beginning of the disk, then when it has gotten the partition info move to the designated area on the disk and perform the requested action. This means much more wear-and-tear on the mechanics of the disk, slower speeds and more overhead for the OS, all reducing efficiency.

I've always followed that advice, but wonder if it applies to an SSD. Harm's guide is even prefaced by saying "SSD's are left out here".

So ultimately, will partitioning my system drive hinder its performance? Particularly in Premiere?

Thanks again,

-- John

[Harm Millaard]

John,

My article was written two years ago and was limited to conventional disks only. With SSD's there is no mechanical wear and tear of heads moving across platters and with the fabulous access times of SSD's the overhead of using partition tables is in fact negligent.

My previous warning about partitioning conventional disks does not apply to SSD's, so if it fits your purposes to use more than one partition on a SSD, I can not think of any valid reason why you should not do that.

[John Hewat]

Thanks Harm - that's what I was hoping to hear!

-- John