MFT, folders and $Logfile

I've just formatted a partition in WinXP and used HDView utility to analyse it. Looks like metadata file placement when Windows formats the disk is following (4KB cluster size):

$MFT:DATA is located starting from cluster 786432.
$MFT:BITMAP is located at cluster 786431.
$LogFile is located so that it ends exactly at cluster 786430 (i.e. just before MFT).
All other metadata files are placed exactly in the middle of a partition.

Just to be sure that this behavior when formatting is consistent, I repeated format several times on the same and on other partitions. Result always seems to be the same (on my WinXP system).

I don't know whether this placement is optimal in terms of filesystem performance, but I think that at least Microsoft thinks it is (otherwise why put metadata files this way?).