Single sided HDDs [was Re: HP drives] - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

9 Jan 2011

...
  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

   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?  
 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> 
...
  -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