Dual Motor harddisks ever made to increase capacity ?

[samer.forums]

Was there ever any harddisk with 2 or more spinning motors made in the past to increase capacity ?

Just asking for history of harddisk lesson.

 

[HEXiT]

no... you dont increase capacity by adding more motors. you do it by shrinking the size of dot the read write head applies to the surface of the disk.

 

[samer.forums]

no... you dont increase capacity by adding more motors. you do it by shrinking the size of dot the read write head applies to the surface of the disk.

you CAN do it to cross the capacity barrier of its generation.

OFC it will be larger drive like 5.25 or so. I am asking if it was done or not. in history.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Was there ever any harddisk with 2 or more spinning motors made in the past to increase capacity ?

How do you exactly imagine putting in more motors would increase HDD capacity?
Capacity can be increased by adding more spinning platters (not motors).

 

[samer.forums]

Was there ever any harddisk with 2 or more spinning motors made in the past to increase capacity ?

How do you exactly imagine putting in more motors would increase HDD capacity?
Capacity can be increased by adding more spinning platters (not motors).

by making 5.25 drive instead of 3.5 drive.

I know about the Platter. I am Just asking if it was done before or not.

for example : when the Density of the platters allowed only lets say 1TB they could add another motor and group of platters to reach 2TB got it ?

I am asking about the history of HDD and so on.

 

[13thmonkey]

reserach bigfoot, nothing to do with #number of motors though.

 

[SkyNetRising]

No, it has not been done, because it does not make sense.

 

[samer.forums]

reserach bigfoot, nothing to do with #number of motors though.

good find

 

[13thmonkey]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Bigfoot

 

[13thmonkey]

reserach bigfoot, nothing to do with #number of motors though.

good find

Long memory

 

[samer.forums]

No, it has not been done, because it does not make sense.

It does make sense. look at it as a 2 drives in one box . just like JBOD today.

 

[13thmonkey]

No, it has not been done, because it does not make sense.

It does make sense. look at it as a 2 drives in one box . just like JBOD today.

That's a silly idea, the form factor would be twice as deep, increasing platter count allows you to keep to std form factors.

 

[samer.forums]

No, it has not been done, because it does not make sense.

It does make sense. look at it as a 2 drives in one box . just like JBOD today.

That's a silly idea, the form factor would be twice as deep, increasing platter count allows you to keep to std form factors.

not really it would fit in 5.25 bay which was a standard as well ... does not need to be twice the capacity by the way, only to break the barrier . also SCSI drives had smaller platters for maximum performance .. anyways Thanks for the info.

also Platters had maximum density barrier , so the only way to break that barrier is to make it double height 3.5 or 5.25 which is not a big deal , double height was a standard as well.

also we are talking about older times ...

 

[COLGeek]

Even in olden times, HDDs only had a single motor. There have never been multi-motor HDDs.

 

[USAFRet]

also we are talking about older times ...

Many of us reading this have been around since "older times".

I cannot recall ever seeing or hearing about a dual spindle hard drive. Not in the consumer space, anyway.

Want more storage space?
Add platters
Increase the areal density of the platters
Add more individual drives

But 2 (or more) spindles and motors in one physical package? No.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

I've worked with hard drives having platters as large as 30", and as small as 1.5", and every single one of them had only 1 spindle motor.

Spindle Motor <> capacity. Only more platters and heads = more capacity.

 

[USAFRet]

In a weird way, you could consider a NAS box a "drive with 4 spindles/motors"

16TB (4x4) seen as a single addressable drive space. RAID 5, leaving 10.6 actual usable space.

 

[samer.forums]

alright then . it was never made. thanks for the info. will go well in the history lesson.

 

[HEXiT]

no... you dont increase capacity by adding more motors. you do it by shrinking the size of dot the read write head applies to the surface of the disk.

you CAN do it to cross the capacity barrier of its generation.

OFC it will be larger drive like 5.25 or so. I am asking if it was done or not. in history.

no you cant. its not been done, makes no sense to do and wont ever be done. the only time i have seen 2 motors in a drive was in a floppy. 1 to spin the disk the other was a stepper to move the drive head. neither of which could affect capacity.
when hdds were launched they had 1 spindled motor to spin the disk and servos to move the drive head. so no. there has never been a hdd with more than 1 motor used to increase capacity..

 

[samer.forums]

no... you dont increase capacity by adding more motors. you do it by shrinking the size of dot the read write head applies to the surface of the disk.

you CAN do it to cross the capacity barrier of its generation.

OFC it will be larger drive like 5.25 or so. I am asking if it was done or not. in history.

no you cant. its not been done, makes no sense to do and wont ever be done. the only time i have seen 2 motors in a drive was in a floppy. 1 to spin the disk the other was a stepper to move the drive head. neither of which could affect capacity.
when hdds were launched they had 1 spindled motor to spin the disk and servos to move the drive head. so no. there has never been a hdd with more than 1 motor used to increase capacity..

Fine. I was just asking if it was done or not. and ofc it will never be done in the future , we have the technology now for very dense platters, no need .

as for if it makes sense or not I disagree with you. it is similar like 2 harddisks in one box in JBOD mode. in the past where it was very hard to get higher density plates , it made alot of sense. but it seems that it was not much profitable .

True you could just add another drive to get more capacity , but two spindles in one box would be smaller than two drives volume , and the 5.25 was there for this. and would just need one board and one cable.

I got my answers thanks to all.

 

[COLGeek]

You are missing the point. A multi-motor configuration does not make sense and likely why it has never been produced.

More motors = more complexity = more heat = more power = more things to synchronize = more things to go wrong = a poor design.

You really can't directly compare a multi-motor to a JBOD for these reasons.

 

[DSzymborski]

My car could carry more stuff if only it had a second steering wheel!

 

[samer.forums]

You are missing the point. A multi-motor configuration does not make sense and likely why it has never been produced.

More motors = more complexity = more heat = more power = more things to synchronize = more things to go wrong = a poor design.

You really can't directly compare a multi-motor to a JBOD for these reasons.

Why not? JBOD does have two motors if you look at it from outside . have double power , synchronizing is not big deal , design it like JBOD , more power ? the same of 2 drives anyways maximum if not less for using single board , and heat can be dealt with in a larger 5.25 case ...

The only thing I can see here that stopped them from doing it is the Pricing .. selling two harddisk is more profitable than selling one box thats all . it is all about profit.

 

[samer.forums]

My car could carry more stuff if only it had a second steering wheel!

the second motor comes with more platters .. so your steering wheel is a wrong parable.

 

[COLGeek]

The members advising you have more than 200 years of computing experience (I have 46, in fact). You are arguing for something that while technically possible, in a pure academic sense, it is not feasible, nor practical in any way....and why it has not and will not be done.

This is not just a matter of profit. There are technical challenges as well. With a JBOD, the controllers still work with individual HDDs. How would you propose synchronizing multiple heads/motors/spindles without a multi-homed interface? What would you expect to gain from such a configuration?