How do i identify the numbers of platters and their size

[stackoverflow]

I have two hitachi HDDs

HDS721616PLA380 - 160GB SATA-II HDD
HDS722512VLSA80 - 120GB SATA HDD

If I partition my HDD according to the platter size then will it increase the performance?

Also

How do I enable NCQ and SATA-II in windows xp?

 

[slicessoul]

If I partition my HDD according to the platter size then will it increase the performance?

I don't think so.

Lets say a 160 GB HDD has 2 platters, each platter has 80 GB and 1 head on each platter. Those heads aren't operate separately on each platter, they are moving together because there's only one dc motor for move the heads and one motor for spin the platters.

NCQ and SATA II is a facility from mainboard's chipset.

NCQ will be enabled/disabled automatically if your chipset support it and NCQ will give significant performance on multithreaded applications.

SATA II is a new implementation on HDD's transfer rate. SATA I has 1.5Gb transfer rate while SATA II has 3.0Gb. To use SATA II, your chipset must support it and your HDD too.

You won't have a choice in Windows XP to enable SATA I or SATA II
You'll be able to enable/disable NCQ in Win XP if you are using nforce chipset mainboard.

 

[slicessoul]

I think i didn't answer you post question.

You can know how many platters you have on your HDD by consulting the factory or their websites. At this moment not much peoples cares about how many platters they have in their HDD. They only cares how many GB they can have.

A small info on how the HDD works : http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/op/index.html