Re: Partitioning for Speed
On Mon, Mar 31, 2003 at 04:17:05PM -0800, Jeff wrote:
> I've seen a reference to two regarding the location of a partition on
> the HDD being faster than other parts of the HDD. I've been trying to
> get a definitive answer on this and it's still not clear to me.
>
> 1. What part of the HDD is faster, the inside (closest to the center
> of the platter) or the outside?
>
> It makes some sense to me that the outside would be faster due the
> fact that it's moving faster, but this may not be a determining
> factor.
I think, in order to get faster access to data in the HD, considering
the available filesystems would be much better:
- reiserfs for fast access (on small files); it is fast, and I use it.
But when reiserfsck couldn't fix the journal, the filesystem would be
gone.
- ext3fs for compatibility (with ext2fs); not as fast as reiserfs, I
believe; the journal file can be turned off/on, so basically you have
both filesystems all the time.
- xfs for fast access (on large files); this is what people say on this
list.
> 2. When using cfdisk to partition, does it start the first partition
> by default at the beginning, or on the inside, of the HDD?
It should be at the beginning.
> My intention here is to learn about the HDD and partitioning for
> speed in general. My purpose is general usage, nothing specific.
I believe that partitioning for speed is a bit unusable; the difference
is hardly noticeable. And speaking about swapfiles, it would be lots
nicer to get bigger memory.
Oki
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