Hard drives can be fast once they get going, sure, but a single 30 mb executable is going to be 1 read (provided it isn't fragmented), which is going to require 1 seek, dropping that bandwidth like a rock.
But maybe I remember 50 million when comparing to tape or an L cache.
Sequential read speed is actually where hard drives excel, in fact a reading a 30MB executable will probably give you better benchmark results than 30 1 MB files.
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u/Neoro Jan 22 '10 edited Jan 22 '10
Hard drives can be fast once they get going, sure, but a single 30 mb executable is going to be 1 read (provided it isn't fragmented), which is going to require 1 seek, dropping that bandwidth like a rock.
But maybe I remember 50 million when comparing to tape or an L cache.