Windows Disk Management: how are partitions ordered on a hard disk drive?

[Bouowmx]

In the Disk Management interface, do partitions of a disk from left to right represent partitions from outer to inner tracks on a disk?

Outer tracks of a hard disk drive are "faster" than inner tracks, as in more data can be accessed per unit time. However, despite that the relevance of this distinction is not useful in practice, I still would like to know.

 

[Ketchup]

Hard disk writes always start on the inside, where the sectors are closer together, allowing for faster roads and writes. The further out you go, the more distance there is between sectors, hence a slower read/write.

 

[Bouowmx]

Assuming HDD with zone bit recording, at same angular velocity (ex. 7200 rpm), linear velocity increases further from center, thus, increasing number of sectors per unit time visited on outer tracks. Example: a GNOME disk benchmark, described as:

The blue line represents read rates, while the red line represents write rates; these are shown as access data rates on the left axis, plotted against percentage of the disk traveled, from the outside to the spindle, along the bottom axis.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Hard disk writes always start on the inside, where the sectors are closer together, allowing for faster roads and writes. The further out you go, the more distance there is between sectors, hence a slower read/write.

I think that you have that backwards.

 

[Ketchup]

I think that you have that backwards.

You're right. Had CD on the brain.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

In the Disk Management interface, do partitions of a disk from left to right represent partitions from outer to inner tracks on a disk?

Yes.

Outer tracks of a hard disk drive are "faster" than inner tracks, as in more data can be accessed per unit time.

That's not even the best part - the read/write head also has less distance to travel to get to the outer tracks from a parked position, so average access latency is lower too.

However, despite that the relevance of this distinction is not useful in practice, I still would like to know.

It is too! (Useful in practice, I mean.)

Sure, for an end-user, short-stroking a hard drive is so ten years ago, but I know at least once SAN controller than (optionally) divides up hard drives into "fast" and "slow" areas to stage more frequently accessed data in the (faster) outer tracks of its drives. It's not as good as having a flash storage tier, but it's basically "free" performance.