[arch-general] fdisk vs. gdisk for GPT partitioning

[Christian Demsar]

On December 17, 2014 10:04:43 AM EST, "David J. Haines" <djhaines at gmx.com> wrote:
>On Wed, Dec 17, 2014 at 02:30:43AM +0100, Neven Sajko wrote:
>> On 16 December 2014 at 20:52, David J. Haines <djhaines at gmx.com>
>wrote:
>> > gdisk is also capable of placing new partitions at the end of a
>block of
>> > empty space without having to do manual calcuation of the start
>sector.
>> > I personally find this behavior invaluable.
>> I'm curious why do you allocate partitions to the end of the disk. Do
>you
>> want to be able to resize them more easily, or something else?
>
>For rotational media, you generally want to put your more-used data on
>the outside of the platters (the "beginning" of the disk from
>partitioning tools' perspective) because the data density of the
>platters is constant throughout, meaning that more data will pass under
>the heads in a given unit of time when they're at the outside of the
>platter, as opposed to the inside.
>
>Thus, you generally want to put things like /, /var, and /home on the
>outside (the beginning) and things like swap on the inside (the end),
>unless swapping happens to be what you want your system to really excel
>at.

I've always been under the impression that hard drives start at the outer edge and work inward as they fill up, as opposed to optical disks.

It makes the most logical sense, given the performance characteristics.
--
vixsomnis