Re: fuzzy disks, Is Parallel Programming Hard, And, If So, What Can You Do About It?

On 5/26/2025 11:58 AM, Stefan Monnier wrote:

Stephen Fuld [2025-05-26 11:16:25] wrote:

https://www.seagate.com/innovation/multi-actuator-hard-drives/

 Hmmm, hard to believe it makes commercial sense: if you need higher
performance, when would this be price-competitive with an SSD?

It should be not much more costly than a single disk of the same capacity.  It has the same number of heads, platters, and of course the same enclosure, etc.  A little more work to separate the two arm magnetic actuators.  The same electronics, except for, and this is probably the most expensive part, an additional read channel.  So still a lot cheaper than an SSD.

Also, that page is very light on details, but the image they include
suggests the two actuators are used on separate platters, so it's akin
to cramming a 2-disk-RAID0 into a single HDD enclosure.

Yeah, sort of.  But a single drive motor, a single host interface, microprocessor, etc.  So quite a bit less costly than two separate disks.

Maybe part of the gain of having two actuators is that each actuator is
a bit lighter?

I suspect that is insignificant.
--
  - Stephen Fuld
(e-mail address disguised to prevent spam)