Is there a performance difference when installing an OS on the last partition?

Question

I have a laptop with Windows installed on a GPT hard drive. I want to have another partition to store data and yet another to install Linux Mint (or Ubuntu, still deciding). Should I install it on the last or penultimate partition?

Answer 1

Is there a performance difference when installing an OS on the last partition?

Yes.

Enough of a difference to matter? Depends on what you're doing, but generally it won't.

Partitions are allocated from the outer edge where sequential speed is higher. Later partitions will be closer to the center with slower sequential speeds. You can observe this with a sequential speed test.

The absolute difference in sequential speed is around 1/2. So if your drive reads 100 Mb/s at the outer edge, it will read 50 Mb/s at the inner edge. The speeds in between are roughly linear.

This post provides more details: Are partitions to the inner/outer edge significantly faster

Answer 2

This makes very little difference - indeed you probably won't notice it. The difference is not nothing, as typical hard drives are faster when reading the outside of the disk then the inside, but you probably won't notice the difference. If you are using an SSD there is no difference.