Placement of partitions for greatest speed

Most drives peak a little ways into the drive so the first partition on the drive is the fastest unless it's really small (then the second partition may be faster). In most cases, the partition on the left will be the fastest.

I'm sure there are differing opinions, but I prefer to keep the paging file on the Windows partition. It's actually less seeking time for the file to be located inside the partition than for the heads to have to constantly move to a different partition. This is especially true if the partitions end up separated from each other (such as in a multi-boot system).

Rolf Marsh wrote:

I want to place my partitions so the paging file has the fastest transfer rate, followed by the operating system partition. I have been told that the partition closest to the outside of the disk would have the fastest transfer rate... is this correct? Therefore, looking at the graphical display, would the partition on the left edge be the fastest?

The pagefile should be on a different PHYSICAL drive than that of the OS. The thing that matters is proper defragmentation WITHIN each partition, using a good program such as Perfect Disk. Also, you can monitor pagefile use with http://www.standards.com/index.html?PageFileUsageMonitor

Thank you both... I agree about the physical disk, but for now, it is what it is... maybe one day...