On Sun, 2004-09-12 at 19:49, Cournapeau David (ENST) wrote: > Mark Knecht wrote: > > > While none of this directly applicable to what you are experiencing, > >when I read your note it seemed similar enough to go ahead and write > >back. It might not only be the type of files system, but also where on > >the drive you are writing. It's not always that well known, but most > >drives are 30-50% slower at the far end of the drive. Most drives are > >speed rated when they are empty. > > > > > Without knowing anything about the details of > hard drive conception, I would think that ALL > drives are much slower for tracks near the > axe than on the border of the disks, since > the speed is proportional to the distance track->axe. > This is inherent to any system using a disk and having > constant angular speed. > > I know that even windows > 95 tried to put the data on the borders of the disks of > an hard drive as long as it could. I am pretty sure linux does the same. > > cheers, > > David Yep - that, and also that as a drive becomes more full it also naturally becomes more fragmented, and fragmentation causes more drive head movement seeking out places to put data. It all ends up working against you and it a good reason to clean up disks now and again, assuming that your file system doesn't do it for you automatically. (I'm unclear about this aspect of Linux file systems. Possibly some do this automatically, either in real time or periodically. Much to learn...)
