SCSI disks with variable # of sectors/track

[Rumi Zahir]

I have recently tested two 3.5" disks (170 Meg Quantum and 200 Meg Maxtor)
with a Sun workstation. Both disks have a variable number of sectors per
track. I.e. the outer tracks contain more sectors than the inner ones.
Since the disks revolve at a constant 3600 rpm, it is obvious that data
can be read off/written to the outer tracks faster than the inner tracks.
The transfer rates vary as follows:

Quantum PD 170S 	1.25 	 na	1.67 		[MBytes/sec]
Maxtor LXT-200S         9.2     12.6    14.8            [Mbits/sec]

Questions:

1. Is it sensible to put heavily used disk partitions (/tmp, swap area)
   on the fast part of the disk ?  (I'd think so, but are there other points
   to consider ?)

2. Which end of the "logical scsi" disk is the "inner" respectively the
   "outer" part of the disk.  I.e. is logical block 0 the very first block on
   the disk (like a conventional record player) or is it the very last block
   on the disk ?  Does /dev/rsd0a live on the outer or on the inner tracks ?
   I can very well imagine that this varies from disk to disk.

Any comments are welcome. If required, I'll summarize to the net.

Rumi Zahir
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