1.
I don't claim to know much about the technical details of hard disks, but it seems to me that the main bottleneck to hard drive performance is the sequential data read/write access strategy they employ. Here is my idea for future performance boost...
When using a 4 platter drive, why not use all 8 read/write heads in parallel to read/write data to the drive. The layout of data stored on the drive will no longer be in the same format as is currently used, but just think of the possibilities...
1. Hard drive performance boosted by factor of 8.
2. Fragmentation reduced by factor of 8.
3. Because data is stored as collections of 8 bits, then drive head movement is reduced by factor of 8.
4. Drive wear & tear greatly reduced.
5. As platter data density increases with each new generation, these advantages will also translate to improvements in this parallel read/write strategy.
6. For the first time, the data throughput of a drive designed using this technique will far outstrip current bus bandwidth speeds.
7. Much simpler to implement than real RAID as all 8 read/write heads are synchronised with each other (not independent as in RAID) and the data storage locations on the disc platters.
8. You can link up several of these drives in a standard RAID configuration for further performance boost.
What do you guys think?
When using a 4 platter drive, why not use all 8 read/write heads in parallel to read/write data to the drive. The layout of data stored on the drive will no longer be in the same format as is currently used, but just think of the possibilities...
1. Hard drive performance boosted by factor of 8.
2. Fragmentation reduced by factor of 8.
3. Because data is stored as collections of 8 bits, then drive head movement is reduced by factor of 8.
4. Drive wear & tear greatly reduced.
5. As platter data density increases with each new generation, these advantages will also translate to improvements in this parallel read/write strategy.
6. For the first time, the data throughput of a drive designed using this technique will far outstrip current bus bandwidth speeds.
7. Much simpler to implement than real RAID as all 8 read/write heads are synchronised with each other (not independent as in RAID) and the data storage locations on the disc platters.
8. You can link up several of these drives in a standard RAID configuration for further performance boost.
What do you guys think?
[Posted by: Nicholas Brus | Date: 11/24/04 03:05:18 PM]





