Are 1TB HDs multi-plattered?

[Allen Simpson]

I'm on several forums and can't find an answer to this very strange question...

Everyone says that a sample drive works better and faster if your samples are on the outer edge of the platter. That makes sense, rotation-wise.

But if the hard drive, like the large 1TB Hitachi, has multiple platters, how do you know where your samples live?

Meaning, you might set your drive up so that you only put 200GB on the 1TB drive. Great, right? That should insure that the samples are all on the outer edge. I mean, if you're only using 20% of the drive, surely, all the samples are near the outer edge, right?

But doesn't the Hitachi 1TB drive have like 5 platters? That would mean that the 200GB of samples you put on it are all on the first platter... from outer edge all the way to the inner edge of the first platter. That totally defeats the purpose of the "get a big drive and don't fill it up" philosophy, doesn't it?

I am VERY confused. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Allen

[fizbin]

My understanding is that the first partitions you create (also the first or far left as viewed in the Windows Disk Management utility) are the faster ones.

The data is evenly distributed over the platters. i.e. the number of platters has nothing to do with where you would want to place the "fast" partition.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong. I have no knowledge of how this would play out on a mac. Interesting topic.

[MMcD]

Data is stored in "cylinders" which ( for a set of horizontal platters) are a vertical stack of tracks, one above the other on all the available platters.

On a five platter drive there are a stack of 10 heads which would start writing data on the outermost tracks on all ten platter sides (one after the other because only one head is writing at a time in these commodity drives) before the stepper motor moved the whole assembly in one track and then the next "cylinder" would be written.

This is a simplification of course because there are partition tables etc but basically the data is written on the outer parts of all available surfaces first.

[Allen Simpson]

Thanks, guys. I appreciate the replies. I'm still researching, but your info really helped.

Allen