Inside/outside of disk and read speeds

[boosfuk]

From looking at HDTach read speed graphs it seems that read speeds can drop by 50% across a disk (I think the start/inside is the fastest?). With that in mind am I right in thinking that, looking at average performance (excluding access times), applications on the first 74GB of say a 320GB 7200 drive with perform better than on all of a 74GB Raptor? Or put another way if you want to realise the speed benefits of a Raptor then don't partition/use all of it?

Obviously the system partition is going to be the 1st anyway so it will not be affected but what if the rest of the drive was used for games/apps - would the ones at the end suffer longer load times?

Am I missing something? Thanks

 

[rpstewart]

The outside edge of the disk is the fastest part, there are more sectors per concentric track as you go towards the outside so more data goes under the head per platter rotation.

While you can control where the partitions are to a certain extent you have no control over where the OS places data within the partitions so you could be worrying about something you might not be able to affect.