Pros and Cons of amd64 (versus i386).

[Peter Jeremy]

On Sat, 2006-Apr-08 18:00:56 -0600, Scott Long wrote:
>Modern disks (I don't know how to define a cutoff to this term,
>unfortunately)

I got my first ZBR (zone-block recording) Seagate SCSI disk at work
about 20 years ago.  I'm not sure when it became common.

>other day.  I'm still not clear on whether the drive starts recording
>at the outer rim or the inner rim of the disk, and that could very well
>different between manufacturers.

Traditionaly hard disks have cylnder 0 at the outside.  It's possible
that some manufacturers may have swapped this.  Note that CDs and DVD
have block 0 at the inside and so the best I/O performance is usually
at the end of the disk.

>  The only way to get a 'fair' comparison is to use
>separate identical disks with identical partition layouts for each
>of your OS installs.

If disk I/O is an issue, maybe even newfs the partitions for each test.

-- 
Peter Jeremy