Splitting OSs Across Multiple Hard Disks

The preceding discussion has focused on hard disk layout across a single hard disk. Modern PCs often have multiple hard disks, however, and you can use such an arrangement to gain some extra speed. The basic principles involved are the same as when arranging partitions for a single-disk system, but with the extra factor that each disk's transfer speed and head movement timing are independent.

Minimizing Head Movements Through Independent Heads

As I discussed earlier, excessive head movements can greatly reduce the speed of your hard disk system. Suppose for the sake of argument that you're using your system in such a way that it issues the following series of disk commands:

 Read file program on Partition ...

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