Hard drive speed tech question - GoFuckYourself.com

mkx · 01-11-2010, 01:27 AM

Always wondered, say I need to backup my computer so I copy 'my documents' and 'desktop' and 'my pictures' for example to my external hard drive. I drag the 3 folders separately so it creates 3 different copying tasks. Would this overwork the hard drive since the laser or whatever inside needs to keep moving in different directions to the magnetic area where the file is written? Is it always better to give the hard drive just 1 task?

Like im thinking, what if video is at the later part of the hard drive disk, more towards the end of the (o) circle and then another video is more towards the inner part of the disk and I was transferring both files at the same time, would the hard drive just keep going back and forth every few fractions of a second?

rowan · 01-11-2010, 03:56 AM

I wouldn't worry, hard drives should easily handle that. If you have AHCI enabled (native SATA mode) then multiple tasks accessing the drive actually improve performance a little, because the drive (rather than the OS) decides in which order to perform the reads and writes on various parts of the disk.

The fact that you're backing up your data is probably more relevant than worrying about stressing the drive.

01-11-2010, 01:27 AM	#1
mkx Confirmed User Industry Role: Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: Toronto Posts: 4,001	Hard drive speed tech question Always wondered, say I need to backup my computer so I copy 'my documents' and 'desktop' and 'my pictures' for example to my external hard drive. I drag the 3 folders separately so it creates 3 different copying tasks. Would this overwork the hard drive since the laser or whatever inside needs to keep moving in different directions to the magnetic area where the file is written? Is it always better to give the hard drive just 1 task? Like im thinking, what if video is at the later part of the hard drive disk, more towards the end of the (o) circle and then another video is more towards the inner part of the disk and I was transferring both files at the same time, would the hard drive just keep going back and forth every few fractions of a second?

01-11-2010, 03:56 AM	#2
rowan Too lazy to set a custom title Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Australia Posts: 17,393	I wouldn't worry, hard drives should easily handle that. If you have AHCI enabled (native SATA mode) then multiple tasks accessing the drive actually improve performance a little, because the drive (rather than the OS) decides in which order to perform the reads and writes on various parts of the disk. The fact that you're backing up your data is probably more relevant than worrying about stressing the drive.