12 Jan
1999
12 Jan
'99
12:09 p.m.
It was thus said that the Great Fred Cisin once
stated:
We used to put the OS/32 directory in the center for optimization.
Early Unix admins put /usr in the center of the disk (or /swap)
to minimize seeks.
DEC did the same, I think on some OS's.
Also, I always felt putting the directory at the beginning or the
end of the disk increased the possibility of data loss through head crash
since the beginning of the disk was a common crash point at load time
with dirty packs and the end of the pack was where the bad sector
data was and was an area where I didn't want a lot of action.
Bill
---
Bill Gates is a Persian cat and a monocle away from being a villain
in a James Bond movie -- Dennis Miller
bpechter(a)shell.monmouth.com | pechter(a)pechter.ddns.org
Microsoft produced some "Stand-Alone BASIC" systems. They had file IO,
and used a a directory structure that was, in principle, similar to that
of MS-DOS, although they subscribed to the seek center fallacy of putting
the directory on a track approximately halfway towards the center.
What's the fallacy in putting the directory in the center of a disk?
Seems to me it would cut down on average the seek time.
-spc (The elevator algorithm favors the center of the disk in fact)