Seagate To Double HDD Speed With Multi-Actuator Technology

[Guest]

Seagate has announced that it plans to double the performance of its future HDDs with its multi-actuator technology.

Seagate To Double HDD Speed With Multi-Actuator Technology : Read more

 

[deepblue08]

Surprised this hasn't been done before. So the performance should be comparable to that of 2 HDDs in RAID 0?

 

[PaulAlcorn]

Surprised this hasn't been done before. So the performance should be comparable to that of 2 HDDs in RAID 0?

Performance should be on par with a RAID 0 of comparable drives.

 

[King_V]

Surprised this hasn't been done before. So the performance should be comparable to that of 2 HDDs in RAID 0?

Agreed - for several years, I'd wondered why there hadn't been drives developed, particularly in multi-platter scenarios, with separate actuators, and maybe the possibility of built-in RAID-like functionality.

 

[vern72]

It's just a matter of time before each pair of heads get their own actuator.

 

[Geef]

It might be a negative thing if you ever Defrag one of these hard drives since it might stick all the files on one area and the extra speed wouldn't be used.

 

[mrmez]

"That means the drive can read or write from two heads at once, provided they are attached to different actuator arms."

So it's like RAID 0, but not all the time.

 

[chicofehr]

I'll wait to see how reliable they are first but its a good start. SSDs are still too expensive for storage purposes.

 

[alextheblue]

"That means the drive can read or write from two heads at once, provided they are attached to different actuator arms."

So it's like RAID 0, but not all the time.

If you stripe the data, you get a RAID 0 array all the time. What I want to know is why isn't this done in hardware at a drive level, invisible to the OS?

 

[cryoburner]

but now your next hard drive may be twice as fast as any drive on the market.

Maybe... If you buy the highest capacity drives and don't plan on buying one for a while. I get the impression that this is most likely to only appear in the highest capacity models, at least initially. The cost of adding these components to a drive priced in the sub-$100 range might be notable, but with the highest capacity 8-platter drives priced around $500, the cost of doubling up these components should make a relatively minimal difference to the total cost of such a drive.

 

[elbert]

Increasing the read/write speed is fine but can not compete with SSD on that front. Given the rising cost of SSD and memory as of late HD makers seem ok with throwing a golden opportunity. They just go along with extremely outdated decade+ capacity for $50 in 1TB. To make matters worse they also sale right at decade old capacitys at $75 with their 2TB. The 4TB drive capacity is turning 8 years old in 2018 and its anywhere from $120~200. Point is people already have them and forgo a small SSD with hard drive to pick up just a larger SSD. Last few years HD makers have fallen to point that SSD are of the capacity of their low end models. This is in part the reason memory/SSD prices are at all time high.

 

[Johan Kryger Haglert]

Hard to know whatever this mean you'll have enough time to actually fill the disc before it's dead or what's it will just die even faster but at-least you hadn't filled it up yet!

 

[Co BIY]

I would think a second set of heads on the opposite side of the drive would give you even more potential benefits. and also redundant access to the data if there is a problem with the first drive head set.