How to partition in the outer or leading edge of a drive

[iPoodOverZune]

I have read in quite a number of forums or websites that partitioning in the outer or leading edge of the drive and putting the system partition there leads to lower seek times. for example
http://partition.radified.com/
http://www.barefeats.com/hard33.html
The difference could be 8-9 msec vs 12-13 msec.

I bought a WD caviar 640 GB and read that partitioning in the outer 10-20% leads to quite low random seek times and the performance could very well catch up to Raptors.

So my question is this: In windows, normally setting the first partition goes to this leading edge. the rest of the unformatted space can be set later for other partitions. In mac, however, all the partitions are made at the same time (with disk utility). So how do you make sure that you get the first partition to the leading edge or how do you figure out which is which? Or does it work this way in mac that the first partition in the series (lets say you make three partitions of a 320GB drive) is always to the leading edge of the drive? In other words:

is the 'first' partition the same as the top partition when using Apple's Disk Utility?

is that the outer rim of the drive or the inner hub?

Are partitions set up from the outer edge to the inside edge?

 

[Consultant]

In OSX there is typically little need for partitioning.

However, if you want to do it, the top partition should be faster. Just partition it, and benchmark it if you really care, but keep in mind that harddrive access time difference of millisecond = not perceivable in most situations.

Windows is slow, but not due to partition or disk allocation, it's just that Windows is poorly made.

 

[iPoodOverZune]

In OSX there is typically little need for partitioning.

However, if you want to do it, the top partition should be faster. Just partition it, and benchmark it if you really care, but keep in mind that harddrive access time difference of millisecond = not perceivable in most situations.

Windows is slow, but not due to partition or disk allocation, it's just that Windows is poorly made.

I understand that a lot of stuff Mac systems does it right. But I was curious with barefeats results and also having read elsewhere the difference in speeds between outer and inner edge. In windows, I know updates make things slower sometimes as they get installed on inner edges, the swap files gets pushed to inner edges as well. So generally on PC, installing an OS on the outer edge followed by small partition for swap makes a lot of difference.

Not sure how this works for Mac OS thought! Is that the OS X, in a single partition, installs itself at the outer edge and always put system files (updates, drivers, whatever) near the outer edge over a period of time.

"but keep in mind that harddrive access time difference of millisecond = not perceivable in most situations."

I think this might be debatable as seek time of raptors definitely make a difference in general system performance. eg seek times of raid0 vs 10000rpm raptor. although the sustained rates may be same for 7200 and 10000 rpm drives.

what is the best benchmarking tool for hard disk in mac os? Windows have very good HDTune and HDtach. Xbench for mac is not that good of a utility.