The first partition I create, is that towards

the center of the drive or the outer edge of the drive?
I want to create two partitions on my hdd and choose to install the O.S. onto the faster partition. It would be the partition closest to the center for fastest seek times right?
Which partition would that be, the first partition or the second?

THanks in advance.

I am pretty confident its towards the inner edge of the platter.

Read the enter the matrix thread. it has alot of good info about drive speeds and locations on the disk.

Thank you, will do.

The further out you are on a hard drive the lower access time and higher read/write speeds you have. It is because of the geometry. In a single revolution the head will travel over far more data at the outer edge than the inner edge.

Windows creates the first partition at the outer edge of the hard drive, which means the first partition will be the faster one.

CD/DVDs are the other way around, there the first files are at the inner edge; the slowest edge.

Thanks so much for that information. I will simply go with the first partition.