walmart pc video

[TheBean]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWHlPH23P-w

at 8:30 linus said that there is no reason to partition like that. ACTUALLY, it helps a ton with fragmentation. the partitions are physical blocks where data is stored on the drive. So, if data is stored more closely together, less fragmentation ( and better speed/reliability). 

 

granted... 4 partitions os overkill

[r2724r16]

I never watched the Linus' video, but fragmenting a HDD should help in terms of read speeds.

[TheBean]

can i quote linus for this?

[XR6]

4 paritions really isn't needed. sure, it helps with fragmentation but is it really necessary to have those partitions? if anything i feel it would just cause annoyance having to save stuff on different parts on the hard drive.

remember, these pcs are most likely going to be bought by parents who are gifting these pcs to their kids to play fortnite.

 

[r2724r16]

1 minute ago, 1kv said:

these pcs are most likely going to be bought by parents who are gifting these pcs to their kids to play fortnite.

Are you saying kids don't know about PC building?

[TheBean]

Just now, 1kv said:

4 paritions really isn't needed. sure, it helps with fragmentation but is it really necessary to have those partitions? if anything i feel it would just cause annoyance having to save stuff on different parts on the hard drive.

remember, these pcs are primarily bought by parents who are gifting these pcs to their kids to play fortnite.

 

I mean.. i would just treat them as different folders. i dont have a problem with those partitions. you dont need to deal with the different physical locations. 

[XR6]

1 hour ago, r2724r16 said:

Are you saying kids don't know about PC building?

effectively, yes. sure, some kids do know about pc building but most kids won't have much of a clue.

i'm a high school student and a lot of the kids in my year/grade have very minimal knowledge of computers. i'm not saying that because those kids don't know it does not mean every kid doesn't know it, but i'm saying that "kids don't know about pc building" from my own experiences.

 

1 hour ago, saksham said:

I mean.. i would just treat them as different folders. i dont have a problem with those partitions. you dont need to deal with the different physical locations. 

yeah but it's not the greatest thing in the world to deal with.

[r2724r16]

3 minutes ago, 1kv said:

effectively, yes. sure, some kids do know about pc building but most kids won't have much of a clue.

i'm a high school student and a lot of the kids in my year/grade have very minimal knowledge of computers. i'm not saying that because those kids don't know it does not mean every kid doesn't know it, but i'm saying that "kids don't know about pc building" from my own experiences.

Most kids in my hs don't know jack about PC building, but I'd say around 15% do.

[XR6]

1 minute ago, r2724r16 said:

Most kids in my hs don't know jack about PC building, but I'd say around 15% do.

that's exactly what i mean. not many kids know anything about PC building. the good thing is in the uk we have pc building lessons and that sort of thing in IT, so you get a hands-on experience with computers. i think more parts of the world should do that (if they haven't already)

[TheBean]

4 minutes ago, 1kv said:

yeah but it's not the greatest thing in the world to deal with.

you can combine them if you want. but its a massive hassle to do it after you start storing files on them. 

[mariushm]

14 minutes ago, r2724r16 said:

I never watched the Linus' video, but fragmenting a HDD should help in terms of read speeds.

No, at most it will reduce SEEK times, since the read/write heads won't have to move across the WHOLE surface of the platters to access the data.

 

That's one of the reasons engineers would shortstroke 10k and 15k rpm hdd's (raptors, cheetahs) ... for example getting a 75 GB hard drive and creating a 15-20 GB partition to force the hard drive to keep its read/write heads within a very narrow region of the drive platters and reduce the seek times to minimum. Helpful for databases, before SSDs became commonplace and reliable enough.

 

In wallmart's pc however, we're talking about cheap bottom of the line  2 TB hard drive from Toshiba (i think it was Samsung's production line which they sold) and those most likely use  2 platters and 3 or 4 read/ write heads ... could be even worse, with 3 platters.. depends on what "generation" of platters these drives are made with, what read/write heads they're using etc.  so data density isn't that great. You still have around 500 GB per platter surface, so creating 4 partitions would still make the read/write heads move all over the area.

 

I think the actual read speed would depend mostly on data density on platters and least on number of platters (because more read/write heads may mean bigger seek times since the whole assembly is heavier).

A higher end hard drive will use platters with higher data density, which may require higher end read/write heads and could be costlier to manufacture.

[GoodBytes]

1 hour ago, saksham said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWHlPH23P-w

at 8:30 linus said that there is no reason to partition like that. ACTUALLY, it helps a ton with fragmentation. the partitions are physical blocks where data is stored on the drive. So, if data is stored more closely together, less fragmentation ( and better speed/reliability). 

 

granted... 4 partitions os overkill

No. See @mariushm post. But let's assume it is true what you said, just get a good disk defragmentation software that can regroup files, and even sort them to maximize the number of files next to each other to reduce seek time.

[N1NJ4W4RR10R]

Keep in mind these PCs are intended for the average consumer.

 

4 partitions is an inconvenience for people who probably won't really notice these differences.

 

[N1NJ4W4RR10R]

6 hours ago, r2724r16 said:

Are you saying kids don't know about PC building?

Only the one's that play fortnite

[RejZoR]

Using 2 partitions is a smart design, so system has its own and data the other. This way you can totally reinstall OS without losing any data or having to shuffle it around or backup on external device. Using 4 is just unnecessary quite frankly. Also, fragmentation isn't really an issue with NTFS as well as Windows having defrag scheduled by default.

[RyomaSJibenG]

 

25 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Using 2 partitions is a smart design, so system has its own and data the other. This way you can totally reinstall OS without losing any data or having to shuffle it around or backup on external device. Using 4 is just unnecessary quite frankly. Also, fragmentation isn't really an issue with NTFS as well as Windows having defrag scheduled by default.

yep, i remember my laptop which have 1 TB HDD, i made it into 3 partitions, 1 for OS, 1 for school stuff, and 1 for games

 

the school and games aren't touched when you reformat or reinstall the OS

[mariushm]

27 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Using 2 partitions is a smart design, so system has its own and data the other.

That would be smart, but a lot of applications default on C:\program files\ (like Steam for example)  or default to saving data to windows partition and pre-defined Windows folders (my documents, my downloads, my games etc).

 

A lot of things still put crap by default in the Users folder which by default is on your Windows partition .. for example see games and saved games and configurations  ( My Documents, My Games , etc etc)

Just go in your Users \ [username] \AppData\ Local and  Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\  and Users\[username]\Documents (at least on Windows 7, don't care about Windows 10) and see how many folders there belong to games and random apps you install. 

All these are hidden folders, but you can use Total Commander or check "show hidden files" in explorer and you'll see them.

 

you also have crap like software installers copying themselves in Windows\Installer folder  (hidden)

 

For example, I have a 370 MB .MSI file with a randomly generated name in Windows\Installer  which is actually the setup executable for  Oracle MySQL database server... it's only there for "Uninstall" to work. There are other programs which are even larger (some Adobe applications can waste 1 GB+ of disk space like this)... adobe acrobat reader is a 240 MB installer in that folder just wasting space. LibreOffice is 234 MB .msi folder wasting space there.

 

 

Most people just don't know or don't care, and default to what's preset - I doubt the company installing Windows on these computers actually bothered to change default folders for My Documents to another partition or something like that.

 

I simply have a 120 GB SSD (bought when they were more expensive) and that's enough for Windows 7.  I'm using MKLINK / junction utility from Microsoft's SysInternals suite to create virtual folders, and everything that's read or written is redirected transparently somewhere else. So some folders i redirect to a mechanical drive ( firefox profile, thunderbird email client etc etc)

 

 

[RejZoR]

You can move all Documents folders. I have gigabytes of data in them and never have to move data. I just redirect them on install and that's it. Yeah, the users folders are dumb as hell and dug in some hellhole folders that are even hidden. Lost bookmarks and game saves so many times before I started systematically backing them up before system reformats. I now run live sync on folders but it can't backup user folders which is super annoying because that would solve this part as well.

[RejZoR]

43 minutes ago, RyomaSJibenG said:

 

yep, i remember my laptop which have 1 TB HDD, i made it into 3 partitions, 1 for OS, 1 for school stuff, and 1 for games

 

the school and games aren't touched when you reformat or reinstall the OS

Steam has a neat feature where you don't have to redownload everything on system reinstalls. You just pop it in the same location (I have it installed on D:\Games) and it'll take existing games as already installed. It'll just do a first time installer thing and that's it. Where EA's stupid Origin forgets EVERYTHING even if you install it in same location and you have to redownload hundreds of gigabytes every time. So freaking retarded I don't even have it installed anymore coz it's so much of a hassle.

[mr moose]

Why are people getting so worked up over these computers? they are just your average overpriced big box store PC.   They exist becasue not everyone knows or cares to build their own. 

[asus killer]

10 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Why are people getting so worked up over these computers? they are just your average overpriced big box store PC.   They exist becasue not everyone knows or cares to build their own. 

they aren't overpriced at all. That PC linus had for 1200USD is actually a very competitive price

https://www.walmart.com/nco/OVERPOWERED-Gaming-Desktop-DTW1-Intel-i7-8700-NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-1070-256GB-SSD-2TB-HDD-16GB-RAM-Windows-10-V2/537878963

 

try and build one for less

 

[mr moose]

3 minutes ago, asus killer said:

they aren't overpriced at all. That PC linus had for 1200USD is actually a very competitive price

https://www.walmart.com/nco/OVERPOWERED-Gaming-Desktop-DTW1-Intel-i7-8700-NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-1070-256GB-SSD-2TB-HDD-16GB-RAM-Windows-10-V2/537878963

 

try and build one for less

 

In one of the other threads on this PC someone did it for half the price.  

[iiMaagic]

7 hours ago, 1kv said:

that's exactly what i mean. not many kids know anything about PC building. the good thing is in the uk we have pc building lessons and that sort of thing in IT, so you get a hands-on experience with computers. i think more parts of the world should do that (if they haven't already)

You might've had PC building lessons in your IT classes but no-one that I know and myself included never had those lessons. In IT lessons in secondary schools kids learn about office applications and very basic things about computers themselves, they never even go near the insides of an actual computer in class.

 

College it becomes a little different. Depending on the course you'll have a class that features PC component / building lessons but for the majority of IT courses you wont, and I'd hope that someone doing IT in colleges would know at the very least basic PC building knowledge.

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

i've used 4 partitions on a 2TB HDD, just as i had 4 partitions when i had 160 GB HDD 11 years ago, it helps me knowing i can compartmentalize things, helps when you want to format a particular drive that i can format it fresh before starting to use it again, it has helped when a portion of drive has a corrupt block, you can use check disk commands on that partition instead of formatting the entire drive.

[asus killer]

Just now, mr moose said:

In one of the other threads on this PC someone did it for half the price.  

someone build this PC: Intel i7-8700, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070, 256GB SSD, 2TB HDD, 16GB RAM, Windows 10 for 600USD . Please i buy 2 if you tell me how.