Disk geommetry, was Re: Kernel Upgrade: Why?
On Tue, Apr 20, 1999 at 10:05:00AM +0100, Graham Ashton wrote:
> On Tuesday 20 April, Richard Harran wrote:
> > Would I see a performance increase if I made sure my linux partition
> > was on the outside of my disk? Would I be even better putting my swap
> > partition as far out as possible?
>
> the partitioning HOWTO talks about this;
>
> http://webdocs.essex.ac.uk/LDP/HOWTO/mini/Partition-3.html#ss3.3
>
> go on, do it - you know you want to...
>
The HOWTO, and the person responding to the Mindcraft survey, both assert that the part of the disk furthest from the spindle is the fastest, and that one can use this to optimise performance. While I don't doubt the first part of the statement, I was under the impression that once you hit a drive's onboard logic, geometry is pretty much up for grabs these days, and attempting to put something on the "outer edge" of the disk is an excerise in self-delusion. The HOWTO is dated 1997, and the information therein may be older. Does anyone out there have some knowledge of current hard drive manufacturing? Or better yet, some numbers from formal or informal experiments in drive partition performance?
Ed
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