Does one partition get a performance boost over another ?

I have a 400gig hard drive.

I have one partition, on which Windows is installed.

I am running a defrag as a precursor to shrinking the volume so I can put on another partition.

In the process of running this defrag, one third-party software recommended I "move all system files to start of hard-drive to increase performance".

This got my wondering.

Hypothetically, let's say I put Windows on the first 200gigs and Linux on the second 200gigs.

Does Windows have a slight performance advantage in this case as it's at the "start" of the hard-drive, or does the read/write arm of it adjust for being in the second partition?

Stupid question...but it popped into my head and I can't find an answer !

Further background reading on this area would be much appreciated also, its quite interesting! :)

Simon Kiely

Posted 2017-10-18T09:30:19.530

Reputation: 145

The (small) performance difference only exists when zone bit recording is employed, but then all modern HDDs do use ZBR. This difference in data rates exists only at the platter interface, and is just one component in the overall access time. See https://superuser.com/questions/823827/hard-drive-how-type-of-i-o-access-influences-access-time/824996

– sawdust – 2017-10-18T23:06:25.440

Answers

On a hard drive, the partitions closer to the beginning do get better throughput than those closer to the end.

From the question Why does performance of a regular hard drive decrease over the duration of a benchmark while SSD doesn't?, you can see this in the form of a graph:

Hard drive slows down as you go from the beginning to the end

The top answer sums this up succinctly:

The mechanical HD is being scanned from the outside inward. Since the disk is spinning at a constant 7200rpm, it's covering more data per second at the outside than the inside.

And as I added:

the ratio of speed of the outside of the HDD to the inside is about 1.8.

Deltik

Posted 2017-10-18T09:30:19.530

Reputation: 16 807

Thanks for the answer - is this still the case when your hard-drive is partitioned, or does the read/write arm adjust to scan from the "middle" of the hard-drive? – Simon Kiely – 2017-10-18T16:06:39.177

@SimonKiely: The hard drive knows nothing of partitions. If your partition is at the end, the hard drive will always access it at the slowest part (close to the center) because that's where the partition physically translates to. – Deltik – 2017-10-18T19:03:40.657