[Mac Hammer Fan]

Does partitioning slow down the harddrive speed? And if yes, what would the best option be to format a 1TB harddrive in 2 or 3 partitions? I need at least a second partition.

TIA

[reader50]

Partitioning does not affect the hard drive's access speed.

More detailed answer:

Mechanical hard drives (as opposed to Solid State) are fastest at the beginning (outer tracks) and slowest at the end (inner tracks). The first tracks are usually ~2x as fast as the inner tracks. People who own servers sometimes partition their drives in half, then use only the first partition - this forces the hard drive to always be in it's upper speed range.

So if you partition, earlier partitions will be faster than later partitions. But you haven't changed the speed of the hard drive at all - you're only mapping to different speed zones that were already present.

[Simon]

And if you partition a drive without good reason you'll end up being a lot slower because you'll be forced to copy stuff from one partition to the other to shuffle free space. Or you'll lose time because you have to repartition.