Short-Stroking Hard Drive: Reinstall Windows?

Short-stroking your hard drive can increase its speed, but it comes at the cost of memory. Short-stroking keeps your most important files, such as your OS and apps, stored in its best-performing sectors, allowing your hard drive to access them faster. While this can be done without reinstalling Windows, it requires specific software and a certain degree of technical proficiency.

Short-stroking a hard drive: benefits and drawbacks

Short-stroking a hard drive can be a great way to increase the speed of your drive, but it does come with some trade-offs. This process involves partitioning your hard drive so that your most important files are stored in the sectors that have the best performance. By doing this, your mechanical hard drive can access files faster, resulting in a significant speed boost. However, this comes at the cost of memory as the partition will be much smaller than the actual size of the entire hard drive.

To set up short-stroking, you need to find your hard drive's "sweet spot". This can be done by downloading and installing HD Tune, which has a free demo. Connect the drive you want to short-stroke as a secondary volume and run HD Tune's Benchmark test. Once the test is complete, look at the graph to find the point where there is a significant drop-off in transfer speed. This point will be the size you want to make your main partition. For example, if the speed drops off significantly at 100 GB, you will want to make a 100 GB main partition.

There are two ways to create a partition: if you are doing a fresh Windows install, you can select the drive during the setup process and create a partition the size of your hard drive's sweet spot. If Windows is already installed, boot into Windows on the drive you're short-stroking, open the Disk Management utility, and create a new volume with the desired partition size.

While short-stroking can provide a significant speed boost, it is important to consider the drawbacks. Using both partitions will slow down the drive as the mechanical arm will have to move back and forth more often. Additionally, short-stroking introduces complexity and can cause problems down the road when the partition needs to be increased or decreased in size. It is also important to note that some people have disputed the effectiveness of short-stroking, claiming that they have not found any significant difference in performance between single and multi-partitioned drives.

In conclusion, short-stroking a hard drive can be a useful technique to increase the speed of your drive, but it comes with trade-offs in terms of memory, complexity, and potential future issues. It is important to weigh the benefits against the drawbacks before deciding whether or not to implement this technique.

How to short-stroke a mechanical hard drive

Short-stroking your hard drive can increase its speed, but it will cost you some memory. This process involves partitioning your hard drive so that your most important files, such as your OS and apps, are stored in its best-performing sectors.

Step 1: Download HD Tune

Firstly, you will need to download and install HD Tune, a tool that will allow you to benchmark your hard drive's transfer rate. The free demo version should have all the features you need for this process.

Step 2: Connect your hard drive

Connect the drive you want to short-stroke to your machine as a secondary volume. Ensure that you have an already installed and functional operating system to run the tool.

Step 3: Run the Benchmark test

Run HD Tune's Benchmark test on your hard drive. During the test, you will see your hard drive's transfer rate (indicated by a blue line) gradually decrease.

Step 4: Identify the sweet spot

Once the test is complete, examine the graph to find a point where there is a significant drop-off in transfer speed. This point will vary depending on your hard drive, so look closely at the graph to identify its unique sweet spot.

Step 5: Create a partition

Now that you have identified the sweet spot, you can create a partition of that size for your main partition. For example, if the speed drops off significantly at 100 GB, create a 100 GB main partition.

There are two ways to create a partition:

Fresh Windows install

During the setup process, when you are asked to select a drive, click on "Drive Options (advanced)" and then select the drive you are short-stroking. Here, you can create a partition that matches your hard drive's sweet spot.

Windows already installed

If Windows is already installed, boot into Windows on the drive you are short-stroking. Click on "Start," type "Disk Management," and press Enter. Right-click on the drive and select "create a new volume." Then, input your hard drive's sweet spot size to create the partition.

Step 6: Use your partitions

With the partition made, you can now store your most important files in the smaller, faster partition. Use the larger partition for other, less speed-reliant files.

Keep in mind that using both partitions will cause the mechanical arm in your hard drive to move back and forth more often, which can slow down the overall speed.

Short-stroking vs SSDs

Short-stroking is a technique that can be used to increase the speed of a mechanical hard drive. It involves placing a partition on the outer tracks of the disk platter, which have a higher data transfer rate than the inner tracks. By storing important files such as the OS and apps in this partition, the hard drive can access them more quickly. However, short-stroking does not provide any benefit to SSDs, which have no mechanical advantages to exploit. SSDs access all sectors at the same speed, regardless of their location.

Short-stroking a hard drive comes at the cost of storage space, as the fast partition will be much smaller than the entire hard drive. Additionally, using both partitions forces the mechanical arm of the hard drive to move back and forth more often, slowing down overall performance. In contrast, SSDs have no moving parts, so there is no performance penalty for storing files in different locations.

SSDs offer several other advantages over short-stroked hard drives. They have almost non-existent access times and high I/O performance, and they are extremely power-efficient. SSDs are also more reliable than hard drives, especially in the long term, as they have no moving parts to fail.

While short-stroking can provide a significant speed boost to a mechanical hard drive, it is not as efficient as an SSD. For users seeking optimal performance, an SSD is the better choice. However, hard drives with short-stroking technology can still be a viable option for those who want a balance of speed and capacity at a lower cost.

Tools to short-stroke a hard drive

Short-stroking a hard drive can bring its speed closer to SSD speeds. This process involves partitioning the hard drive, allowing it to access files faster by keeping the most important files stored in its best-performing sectors.

HD Tune:

• Download and install HD Tune, which has a free demo.
• Connect the drive you want to short-stroke as a secondary volume and run HD Tune's Benchmark test.
• Observe the transfer rate (blue line) as it drops during the test.
• Once the test is complete, identify the point of a significant drop-off in transfer speed, which is your hard drive's "sweet spot."
• Create a partition of this size using the "Drive Options (advanced)" during a fresh Windows install or by using the Disk Management utility if Windows is already installed.

Windows Disk Management:

• Boot into Windows on the drive you want to short-stroke.
• Open the Start menu, type "Disk Management," and press Enter.
• Right-click on the drive and select "Create a new volume."
• Input your desired partition size, which can be based on the sweet spot identified through HD Tune or another method.

GParted:

If you plan to short-stroke your OS drive, you can use GParted, a Linux live CD built for storage utilities.

• Boot into GParted and shrink the partition outside of the OS.
• Connect your future OS drive and install Windows on it.

Windows Built-in Tools:

Any partitioning tool will work, and you can even use Windows built-in tools:

• Open the Start menu, right-click on "Computer," and click "Manage."
• Click on "Disk Manager" on the left.
• Find the disk drive, delete any partitions (after backing up your data), and create a new partition.
• Set the partition to approximately 20-30% of the drive's space using the partition wizard.
• Create another primary partition for additional storage, if desired.

Hitachi Short-Stroking Tool:

Hitachi offers a short-stroking tool for their hard drives, but it may only be available to large customers, such as server manufacturers.

Preparing to short-stroke a hard drive

Short-stroking your hard drive can bring its speed closer to SSD speeds, but it comes at the cost of memory. It works by keeping your most important files, such as your OS and apps, stored in its best-performing sectors.

Before you begin the process of short-stroking, you will need to prepare a few things. Firstly, you will need to download and install HD Tune, which has a free demo. You will also need to ensure you have a way to connect both your old and new hard drives to your computer. If you are using a desktop computer, you can install your new hard drive alongside your old one. If you are using a laptop, you will need to purchase something like a SATA-to-USB cable, which will allow you to connect your hard drive via USB.

Additionally, it is recommended that you have a backup of your data before beginning any big data-writing processes. You should also have a Windows system repair disc, just in case your Master Boot Record gets corrupted. You can follow these instructions for creating a repair disc for Windows 7, 8, or 10.

Once you have everything in place, you can begin the process of short-stroking your hard drive. Connect the drive you want to short-stroke to your machine as a secondary volume and run HD Tune's Benchmark test. From here, you will be able to identify your hard drive's sweet spot—the point at which there is a significant drop-off in transfer speed.

With this information, you can then decide on the size of your main partition. For example, if you see a significant drop-off in speed at 100 GB, you will want to make a 100 GB main partition.

Now you are ready to create a partition, which can be done in two ways, depending on whether you are doing a fresh Windows install or if Windows is already installed on your machine.

Frequently asked questions