Platter Locations for Start, Middle, and End

[michaelrw]

Hello,

From the demonstration video, the "start" location for a platter-based drive is noted as being at the outside of the disk, correct?

Thank you.

 

[DanR]

Hello,

From the demonstration video, the "start" location for a platter-based drive is noted as being at the outside of the disk, correct?

Thank you.

Yes. The "start" or beginning of a spinning drive is at the outer edge of the disk; i.e the first track on the disk.

 

[PHolder]

This is a great video, but unfortunately it doesn't make any mention of how the tracks are numbered.
Branch Education YT video on how HDDs work
I snapped a frame to make this diagram, which I hope is useful.

 

[SeanBZA]

Originally the start was the outer edge, but with LBA mapping the start is often the inner tracks, with the sector count growing to the outside, and for some drives the traslation for CHS actually means that some inner tracks for some heads (because the drive controller maps the LBA count ot a made up head cylinder and sector, to allow you to get head counts up to 99, sector counts up to 63 and cylinder counts to 1023, on a single sided single platter drive) might actually be located on the outer edge, and for any remapped bad sectors they could literally be almost any space on the drive, in allocated spare internal cylinder locations close by to the bad spot to reduce seek time for that bad LBA.