Is there any kind off performance or other issue relating to the position of Linux on the HDD. If swap is hda1 and my current Linux is hda2, will there be any difference with the distro that I put on hda3 or 4??? Logic tells me no difference but ....... it's been a long day!!

When I install Solaris, for instance, I like to put swap on the second slice...it is closer to the center of the disk and thus has less travel than the further, outter slices.

I dual boot all my machines, and have seen no discernable performance difference based on which partition was used. I would consider this a good question, but a non-issue at least for the desktop. If you are doing very heavy and _sustained_ I/O-intensive work, then I agree with stingx's recommendation because you would want to minimize the distance the head has to travel on average, but typically this kind of activity would only occur when the data is highly volatile and users will be pounding on it for extended periods of time (such as with a huge database with large numbers of simultaneous transactions) In my view that is common in the corporate world, but is unlikely for a desktop installation. -- J.W.

thanks people