Front or Back

[shmoes]

Hey,

Can someone tell me if the front of the back of a harddrive is faster? specificly for paging files/graphic scratch disks

and in windows diskmanager .. is it front to back from left to right?

thx


~Shmoes

I lay claim to nothing and everything. My words may be wisdom or disaster. In the end you make a choice. Noone is perfect.

 

[micker377]

There is no "front" or "back". A hard drive reads like an old vinyl record, except from inside to outside. The inside is of course faster, but that is where the system files are automatically installed. In diskmanager you can see where the system files are located, and go from there.

 

[shmoes]

Hmm, can anyone else agree/disagree with that, i got this different information elsewhere ..

basicly that the outside is faster because it can spin without having to move the laser more data fits on the outside track?



~Shmoes

I lay claim to nothing and everything. My words may be wisdom or disaster. In the end you make a choice. Noone is perfect.

 

[paparazi]

Shmoes
I would have agreed with you untill I read this:Quote

"The stack of platters rotate at a constant speed. The drive head, while positioned close to the center of the disk reads from a surface that is passing by more slowly than the surface at the outer edges of the disk. To compensate for this physical difference, tracks near the outside of the disk are less-densely populated with data than the tracks near the center of the disk. The result of the different data density is that the same amount of data can be read over the same period of time, from any drive head position"
see the link:

http://www.ntfs.com/hard-disk-basics.htm

Martin

Start by questioning and soon you will be anwering.
So please take but remember to return and give when you can.

 

[shmoes]

So basicly it doesn't matter?




~Shmoes

I lay claim to nothing and everything. My words may be wisdom or disaster. In the end you make a choice. Noone is perfect.

 

[cdogg]

First of all, Shmoes is right about the fact that it reads outside-in.

Now about whether the inside or outside is faster, I would assume that if one is faster than the other, it is not the inside. What paparazi posted makes sense, but I'll have to do some research myself to confirm it.

In magazines and websites I've come across in the past, they always encouraged that most frequently accessed data be at the beginning of the drive. As a matter of fact, defragmenters like Norton's SpeedDisk will make an effort to place such files at the beginning for speed. It might just be because these files would be located closer to the FAT/NTFS table, thus causing less head movement during bootup for example.

More on this soon...

~cdogg
[tab]"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind";
[tab][tab]- Aristotle
[tab][navy]For general rules and guidelines to get better answers, click here:[/navy] faq219-2884

 

[JimInKS]

Take a look at this discussion of Zoned Bit Recording.
It explains why on "modern" hard drives the data rate from outside tracks is greater than inner tracks.

http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/geom/tracksZBR.html

 

[micker377]

move the laser"

Hard drives use magnetic read heads, CD rom's use laser.

 

[shmoes]

that was a lack of knowledge of my part, but a similar idea.


~Shmoes

I lay claim to nothing and everything. My words may be wisdom or disaster. In the end you make a choice. Noone is perfect.