How do I place a partition on inner/outer edge of the HDD?

TheOwner · 04 Dec 2022

idgat said:

Yes, Windows Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management but it's a proper PITA because it measures in bytes. E.g. if you want a 20GB partition, you have to work out the exact number of bytes (and that's not just a nice round 20,000,000 bytes ....)

Why the aversion to 3rd party option ? Nice rounded calculations and such much easier (and meaningful) GUI than Disk Manager.

Can u answer my question please?

"Command "list partition" in diskpart shows me "offset" where each partition begins. So if I create 2 partitions, the first one will always be on outer edge of the disc? Do I understand this correct?"

idgat · 04 Dec 2022

TheOwner said:

Can u answer my question please?

"Command "list partition" in diskpart shows me "offset" where each partition begins. So if I create 2 partitions, the first one will always be on outer edge of the disc? Do I understand this correct?"

No idea. Difficult when not actually hands-on in the process.

One of the reasons I stick with 3rd party options, does away with having to understand technical requirements. The GUI allow me to actually see what's happening.

EDIT : As you're tinkering with something your unfamiliar with, I assume you've created a backup image of the existing system before trying/applying any changes .... ?

NavyLCDR · 04 Dec 2022

TheOwner said:

Can u answer my question please?

"Command "list partition" in diskpart shows me "offset" where each partition begins. So if I create 2 partitions, the first one will always be on outer edge of the disc? Do I understand this correct?"

Just the opposite. The lower the offset the more towards the center of the disk the partition will be. Track 0 is the innermost track of the disk.

TheOwner · 04 Dec 2022

NavyLCDR said:

Just the opposite. The lower the offset the more towards the center of the disk the partition will be. Track 0 is the innermost track of the disk.

You are wrong. Hard drive Inner or Outer. What is Faster?

- - - Updated - - -

Mechanical HDD has couple of advantages for me, thats why I keeping them:
Is ideal for videos, music, documents and backups where speed doesnt matter.
Ideal for "temp" data like browser cache, pagefile which prevent wear out SSD.
Ability do "secure erase" of files/folders.

garlin · 04 Dec 2022

NavyLCDR said:

Just the opposite. The lower the offset the more towards the center of the disk the partition will be. Track 0 is the innermost track of the disk.

This is backwards.

Track 0 is the outermost, it's relative to the disk actuator arm. When a disk is at rest (not spinning) the heads park outside of the platter.

In any case, dividing the disk in half is known as "short stroking" and a common practice in enterprise RAID. It's not so much the difference in relative speed of rotational data, but to avoid the disk arm wildly moving from the outside to the inside of the platter, and back. The arm moves much slower than the disk's rotational latency.

To imagine this on the disk frag map, you don't want to ping-pong from the top of the block map to the bottom. Having data scattered sideways on the map is less problematic than moving top/bottom.

TheOwner · 04 Dec 2022

garlin said:

This is backwards.

Track 0 is the outermost, it's relative to the disk actuator arm. When a disk is at rest (not spinning) the heads park outside of the platter.

In any case, dividing the disk in half is known as "short stroking" and a common practice in enterprise RAID. It's not so much the difference in relative speed of rotational data, but to avoid the disk arm wildly moving from the outside to the inside of the platter, and back. The arm moves much slower than the disk's rotational latency.

To imagine this on the disk frag map, you don't want to ping-pong from the top of the block map to the bottom. Having data scattered sideways on the map is less problematic than moving top/bottom.

So is better have only one partition without any zones? Just everything together? (Operating system with all programs I have on separate SSD).

cereberus · 04 Dec 2022

TheOwner said:

You are wrong. Hard drive Inner or Outer. What is Faster?

- - - Updated - - -

Mechanical HDD has couple of advantages for me, thats why I keeping them:
Is ideal for videos, music, documents and backups where speed doesnt matter.
Ideal for "temp" data like browser cache, pagefile which prevent wear out SSD.
Ability do "secure erase" of files/folders.

That is absolute twaddle about pagefiles, caches etc being better on hdds rather than ssds. Modern ssds are far more write resilient nowadays than 1st gen ssds.

You are slowing down pc by doing this.

You will gain more performance improvement putting this back to C drive than any pratting around with head location on an hdd.

Anyway if you really want to limit travel of arm on hdd (pointless these days), just partition drive.

In the end you are trying to use decade old solutions to problems that no longer exist unless still using decade old drives.

Even then I would replace old drives as their probability of failure increases signicantly as they get older.

I would bite the bullet and buy a second ssd, and use hdd for backups.

NavyLCDR · 04 Dec 2022

Yep. Sorry, I was wrong. It has been so long since I have used obsolete HDD's my memory regarding them is foggy. I do still remember how to use a rotary dial phone though and I remember 1 is closest to the finger stop and 0 is the farthest away from the finger stop.

garlin · 04 Dec 2022

TheOwner said:

So is better have only one partition without any zones? Just everything together? (Operating system with all programs I have on separate SSD).

SSD's are solid state, the reason they're magically is there is no "disk arm" to move around. Every memory cell takes the same amount time to access, regardless of location. The system may assign writes to "random" cells because it's doing a wear leveling pattern to extend the life of a SSD by not overwriting one block too many times. That's all invisible to you, and why you never defrag a SSD.

For spinning disks, splitting into two partitions can be helpful on slower drives. Is there a difference in the inner and outer rings? Yes, but the percentage might not be as much depending on the drive speed (RPM) or geometry. Short stroking is useful, but the penalty is you're limited to a smaller partition. So it's possible to run out of space very quickly.

Like a few people have said, switch to SSD or have both types of drives and keep different data on each drive type. While SSD lifetime and reliability have improved, HDD still have the best data capacity and cost/GB.