9 Jan
2011
9 Jan
'11
10:40 a.m.
Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2011 20:13:16 +0000 (GMT)
From: ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk (Tony Duell)
Subject: Re: HP drives
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Message-ID: <m1PbfA8-000J3yC at p850ug1>
Content-Type: text/plain
Except for a ferw very odd ones (e.g. hard drives which record analagoue
singals such as analogue video [1]) every hard disk I've worked on has
used both sides of all platters for something. Maybe not user data
storage (for excample, it may contain servo information only), but there
will be a head on it.
<snip>
Alas they
don't :-(. I've heard the term 'track' used for hard drives
when they meant 'cylinders'. ARGH!!!
-tony
I thought you could only read/write to the top layer of the harddrive
platter, or do some drives allow writing to both sides? -tony
FWIW, there was a period about the turn of
this century when most of
Maxtor's production was a single disk drive with only one side used. In
addition to saving the head assembly there were enuf other cost savings to
make it worthwhile. One example is that it is relatively easy to
load/unload a bottom head on the ID, thereby making the higher capacity OD
real estate available.
Tom