Question I can't be the first person to think of this idea?

[ch33r]

So to make hard drives speed up to compete with SSDs, why don't they add more than one needle to read the platters, just on opposite sides of eachother so they don't interfere with eachother? Why is this not a thing?

 

[AllanGH]

Still, though, with the non-permanent storage nature of the current SSDs, mechanical HDDs still see good use as back-up media.

 

[USAFRet]

Still, though, with the non-permanent storage nature of the current SSDs, mechanical HDDs still see good use as back-up media.

Yes, but without the added fragility of multiple moving heads.

 

[AllanGH]

Absolutely!

I'm using single-needle HDDs.

 

[VIVO-US]

As someone who used to work in electronics manufacturing, I can confirm that the concerns mentioned by the others would be extremely difficult and costly to overcome. The driver board would be far more complex, and the multiple heads would have to be 100% accurate and perfectly synced to avoid errors. This is nearly impossible without the highest grade components you can get (~0% manufacturing tolerance). I'm sure it could be done, but the hard drive would cost more than the computer, and SSD prices per GB have already dropped around 75% from where they were a few years ago. It would also still be slower than an SSD since it takes time for the mechanical components to reach the destination of the stored data, where an SSD has almost immediate access to every stored bit.

So, yes, someone could probably make a hard drive the way that you've suggested, but it would unfortunately be impractical. It's also unlikely that it would fit well in a laptop or tablet.

 

[AllanGH]

...and, of course, research still continues on three-dimensional optical storage media...

 

[NightHawkRMX]

I have a question. How slow is tls vs slc?

I heard someone saying an intel 660p is slower than a hdd. I know this isnt true and my laptops 660p is much faster than my sata ssd. However, the above question spranf from that post.

 

[AllanGH]

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-ssd-660p-qlc-nvme,5719-2.html

 

[hang-the-9]

So to make hard drives speed up to compete with SSDs, why don't they add more than one needle to read the platters, just on opposite sides of eachother so they don't interfere with eachother? Why is this not a thing?

This is what RAID 0 does, in a way, with multiple drives. It's like asking "why don't they just add x to x to make it faster or better". You can make airplanes with 12 engines, cars with 4 engines or V8 turbos for every car, make pants with 10 giant pockets to hold stuff better, make cell phones with giant batteries for longer life, but the drawbacks are far over the benefits and practicality of the design.

 

[VIVO-US]

I have a question. How slow is tls vs slc?

I heard someone saying an intel 660p is slower than a hdd. I know this isnt true and my laptops 660p is much faster than my sata ssd. However, the above question spranf from that post.

SLC is the fastest and most reliable, followed by eMLC, MLC and TLC. TLC is the cheapest per GB, and for most regular tasks, you won't notice a difference between it and any other SSD. SLC is great for enterprise use because of its long lifespan (around 20x longer than a TLC) and high speed. I use a Samsung MLC for my main SSD at home, and it's never given me a problem.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

My Kingston A400 uses TLC.
My old HP S700 also uses TLC aswell.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Actually, QLC is cheaper, but has slightly less endurance than TLC.

https://www.reneelab.com/difference-slc-mlc-tlc.html