speed relative to partition location?

[juliancode]

i put my root at the end of my disk (a 30gb 5400rpm laptop drive) because i figured i use data from my /home more often. now portage seems to run alot slower, especially when checking dependancies. i hdparm'd the hell out of it like i usually do, so either the slowdown is from the partition location or maybe the new version of portage is just slower? i thought the maximum speed decrease i would get would be 10-15%, but its worse than that, the slashes turn very slowly. any info would be rad, thanks.

[Malakin]

The end of the hard drive is about half as fast as the beginning.
http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200210/20021014ST3120023A_2.html

Sounds like there might be more to the slowdown then just this though.