🚀 go-pugleaf

ldh@interlog.com (Laurent-David Hasson) wrote:
> I have read somewhere that there was actually quite a difference in 
> performance depending on where data is on a disk.
Seeks are generally fastest to stuff half-way across the platter, as on
average you're not that far away from it. It depends also on the operating
system and how it schedules its disk accesses. Certainly it's a good idea
to make a swap partition half-way through (e.g. 540MB drive, 250MB part1,
40MB part2 for swap, 250MB part3). Another effect on modern drives is due
to the fact that more sectors are stored on outer tracks (even though the
IDE controller lies about this) so the transfer rate is higher as you get
more sectors per (fixed time) revolution.

> Which ever way it is, when you partition a disk, does the partitioning 
> layout start from the center of the disk platter or near the edge?
Track 0 is at the outside for the disks I've looked into. So to
generalise, for a 1024 cylinder drive, track 0 is fastest transfer, track
512 is fastest seek and track 1024 is just plain slow all round. (I'm
ignoring the fact that reported tracks are different to physical tracks)

Boggle
(P.Quick@herts.ac.uk)