hard disk read/write heads

[ara]

why can't hard disks heads be seperate?
what i mean is, you know the heads on different platters/faces? why can't they be controlled seperately on multi platter drives (all drives?)
Wouldn't that greatly boost performance, because then, when you need to read something on one platter, you don't need to stop things being read on other platters, that is of course, assuming that you need several platters read at once

Thanks for any input,
Ara

 

[Emerald]

If I remember this right, reading and writing to a drive is a sequencial process; therefore, it does not make sence to move heads individually. drivers do not except parallel data streams like ATM data streams

 

[ara]

wouldn't it be better to have many streams... wouldn't that be similiar to having a raid array with x platters instead of x drives

(i know that this would need new electronics, transfer method and possibly new cabling)

Ara

 

[RichPLS]

I would think that the drive logic board could handle this as it already does, so current cables and controllers could work with newer technology of multiple drive heads, since I doubt this would cap the SATA2.5 spec.

 

[486]

They can. But that will double the price of HDD.

 

[RichPLS]

Well, so, the high end graphic cards cost double, but people are still willing to pay for performance... and once word gets out and volumes go up, price will drop.
BTW, SCSI drives still cost double what IDE costs...
Build it and people will pay.