Hard disk seek time / access time

[Liquid Len]

Hard disk seek time is often considerably faster near the center of the hard disk than the outer edge. Does this affect recording? Am I better off recording to a partition nearer to the center of the hard drive or will it make a difference? If so, are partitions allocated from the center out (like CD writing order) or from the outside in?

[garyb]

i have recorded as many as 24 tracks at a time on all parts of the drive. these recordings were for as much as 3 continuous hours with no clicks or pops or glitches. i don't think that 40 is out of the question. i'm sure the center is best, but...

[Nestor]

As far as I know, all discs are written from the center, out.

If seek times are faster at the centre is because of the positions of the heads.

Unless you are looking for an extreme performance, as Garyb is telling you, you don’t actually need to bother about where you do your recordings. Anyway, if you need special seek time speeds for your work, you could always get a faster drive, at 10000, they get cheaper and cheaper every day.

[Fede]

On 2005-10-26 23:16, Nestor wrote:
As far as I know, all discs are written from the center, out.

no.
hard disks are written from the border to the centre, that is the reason why, gived a constant rotating speed, extern tracks reach a greater trajectory velocity.
(v = w * R)
You can have proof of this benchmarking different partitions, you'll see that performance decreases as you go near the end of the disk (inner part)

If seek times are faster at the centre is because of the positions of the heads.

seek times aren't faster.
seek times depend from the rotating speed of the disk (that is constant) and from the relative track position of the head (and thus defragmentation status)

cheers
Fede