Weird zones in Cornice Storage Element 1.5GB micro HDD

[fzabkar]

Here is an analysis of a retro Cornice Storage Element 1.5GB micro hard-drive:

https://goughlui.com/2022/08/28/tech-flashback-leadtek-my-digibank-1-5g-usb-2-0-mini-external-hard-drive/
https://goughlui.com/2012/11/15/tech-flashback-cornice-storage-elements/

Here is the HD Tune read benchmark graph:



The author observes that ...

... it seems that sector zero starts somewhere not on the outer edge of the disk which is relatively uncommon for hard drives. At a guess, it starts from this location and goes inwards, then jumps back to that track and goes outward resulting in this transfer rate curve. I’m not entirely sure why they chose to do this – perhaps it “games” certain benchmarks that only do a start/middle/end transfer rate check?