Reply to post:

Seagate's lightbulb moment: Make read-write heads operate independently

Lamb0
IT Angle

One of the problems with the Conner's dual servo drive was vibration. The opposing arrays each covered all of the platters' sides. The Bernoulli Effect isn't powerful, yet, it's powerful enough to induce vibration on the platter. With multiple heads on the same platter sooner or later a resonance can be induced significant enough to crash of opposing heads. Long term reliability was NOT good.

Seagate uses separate servos and head arrays for different platters to sidestep much of the unbalanced asynchronous force inducing vibration and may be much more reliable. The dual servo action rather reminds me of scissors, which might also reduce unpredictable vibrations. (If they can be predicted, they can be compensated.)

I see no reason for RAID1 - I'd prefer a separate drive for mirroring. While an enterprise might want the dual servo arrangement for more I/Os, that's where Flash rules. For archival purposes, however, sustained SATA3 speeds from near SATA2 technology can speed backups and halve rebuild times for (hopefully) a modest increase in the price of the drives. Would you rather have a ~12 to 16TB drive read in nearly a day, or maybe only a shift?

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon