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This page contains all of the posts and discussion on MemeStreams referencing the following web page: Test Setup, Flash SSDs and Access Time - Review Tom's Hardware : Accelerate Your Hard Drive By Short Stroking. You can find discussions on MemeStreams as you surf the web, even if you aren't a MemeStreams member, using the Threads Bookmarklet.

Test Setup, Flash SSDs and Access Time - Review Tom's Hardware : Accelerate Your Hard Drive By Short Stroking
by Lost at 4:35 pm EST, Mar 5, 2009

Although short stroking doesn’t get hard drives anywhere the access times of flash SSDs, we found that their access times still decrease by 40% in the case of the Ultrastar 15K450 SAS HDDs, and by an amazing 50% in the case of the Deskstar 7K1000.B SATA drives. The advantages are similar when the drives are configured in RAID modes. Since no future hard drive will be able to significantly shorten today’s access times, short stroking is an excellent technique for improving performance in a very noticeable way. Even the desktop 7K1000.B shows access times that are quicker than those of 10,000 RPM drives.

Tom's reduced access times on high end SATA drives as much as 40% by formatting only the outer 10-20% of the platters, to minimize seek times of the read heads.

Amusing.

RE: Test Setup, Flash SSDs and Access Time - Review Tom's Hardware : Accelerate Your Hard Drive By Short Stroking
by bucy at 3:52 pm EST, Mar 6, 2009

Jello wrote:
Although short stroking doesn’t get hard drives anywhere the access times of flash SSDs, we found that their access times still decrease by 40% in the case of the Ultrastar 15K450 SAS HDDs, and by an amazing 50% in the case of the Deskstar 7K1000.B SATA drives. The advantages are similar when the drives are configured in RAID modes. Since no future hard drive will be able to significantly shorten today’s access times, short stroking is an excellent technique for improving performance in a very noticeable way. Even the desktop 7K1000.B shows access times that are quicker than those of 10,000 RPM drives.
Tom's reduced access times on high end SATA drives as much as 40% by formatting only the outer 10-20% of the platters, to minimize seek times of the read heads.
Amusing.

btw this trick is not new -- database gurus have been doing this for years. Not only does it decrease seek time, it increases throughput since disks have higher density (sectors per track) on the longer outer tracks.