Should root partition be first partition?

[Michael Powell]

b. f. wrote:

> On 2/8/10, Jerry McAllister <jerrymc at msu.edu> wrote:
>> On Mon, Feb 08, 2010 at 02:37:30PM -0500, b. f. wrote:
[snip]
>>> If you're laying out a new disk, you may as well take a few minutes
>>> and get the most out of it, even if you're not going to invest in a
>>> lot of new hardware.
>>
>> The system nowdays does all that figuring for you and manages
>> boundaries reasonably.
>>
>> ////jerry
>>
> 
> That does not seem to be the conclusion of those who contributed to
> the thread I cited, although "reasonably" is open to interpretation.

This will become more critical with the upcoming transition from 512K to 4K 
sector size. Indeed, I believe it was initial investigations for 
implementation of this and/with comparison against other OS methods. The 
large performance differences witnessed led to a deeper, more retrospective 
look at current approaches based on 512K sectors as well. 

-Mike