1. M$ placed the mft zone 1/3 into the drive to avoid fragmentation which is detrimental to performance its got nothing to do with speed; in fact its now slower
The real reason for M$ moving the mft is simple
Reduced customer support calls
2. files located on the outer tracks of the disk are accessed quicker (always have & always will do)
Advantages of Multi-Partition Drives
Advantage #1: A hard drive containing multiple partitions allows you to *lower* your drive's effective access time, providing you with a more responsive system.
If you create a partition at the outer/leading edge of your drive (*1), and install your operating system & applications there .. and use the inner/slower parts of the disk for storing files that don't require access during normal system operating (i.e. downloads, drivers, back-ups, Ghost images, etc.) .. you'll limit/restrict your drive's seeks to the fastest part of the drive.
(*1) - the first partition you create on a drive will automatically take the outer/leading/fastest edge. Here's a photo of a hard drive's intenals: -
In other words, the drive's read/write heads won't have to travel (seek) to the far end of the drive (during normal system usage). This will provide you with a more responsive system by decreasing the drive's effective seek/access time.
A drive with a larger capacity will notice a more dramatic 'truncating' effect. For example, 8 gigs is roughly 40% of a 20-gig drive. But it's only 10% of a 80-gig drive. In other words, you can limit your drive's travel (seeks) to the fastest 10% of a 80-gig drive by creating an 8-gig partition and storing only your operating system & applications there. It's common knowledge that a drive with the same amount of data will 'feel' more responsive on a *larger* drive than a smaller one .. even tho both drives may have *identical* manufacturer's performance specs.
This is because the data on the larger drive will be limited to a smaller area. This is also one of the reasons why larger drives feel faster, even tho they have the exact same manufacturer specs as the smaller one. It's cuz the larger drive has a lower effective seek time.
If you install your operating system to a single, large partition, there's nothing to prevent both system & program files, over time, from winding up at the far end of the drive (Windows updates, program updates, driver updates, etc.).
System and program files that wind up at the far end of the drive take longer to access, and are transferred at a slower rate, which translates into a less-responsive system.
If you look at the graph of sustained transfer rates (STRs) from the HD Tach benchmark you'll see clearly that the outermost sectors of the drive transfer data the fastest.
In this case - that of a 45GB IBM 75GXP, which isn't very different from a 60GB IBM 60GXP - the transfer rate is roughly 40MB/s at the outer edge. But it's less than half that, or ~18MB/s, at the inner tracks. This is because the linear velocity of the discs are faster at the *outer* tracks. If you've ever played on a merry-go-round, you understand this concept. You know that you move much faster when standing at the outer edge, compared to the center.
Faster linear velocity means that more data passes under the read/write heads per unit time. This is another way of saying higher data transfer rate
(which is simply another way of saying 'faster').