Hard drive performance - platter number

[cyberjt]

Does anyone know, in a multi platter hard disk, is the data recorded sequentially across the platters, or is one platter 'filled' first and then the next one used?

Reason for asking: There used to be a trick of creating a partion at the edge of the drive for putting swap file on, since this span faster than the middle theoretically it was faster access. Obvisouly if the drive 'filled' platters one after the other this would no longer be the case.

 

[DougLite]

The drive is filled outside in, so indeed the first part of the disc offers the highest linear transfer rates.

If you think of each platter as a bagel, that you are about to eat, all of the bagels are stacked on top of each other. You bite into all of the bagels at once, just like the read write heads work on all of the platters rather than filling platters individually. Hmmm...bagels.

 

[cyberjt]

Excellent, thanks for the reply