HIGH QUALITY, HARD TO GET AND CUSTOM ELECTROLYTIC CAPACITORS FOR POWER SUPPLIES, DISPLAYS, TVs, MOTHERBOARDS AND MORE!

How about a modern 3600RPM drive?

Discuss or get help with HDDs here. And yes, SSDs go in this category too.

How about a modern 3600RPM drive?

Postby LongRunner » October 24th, 2013, 2:40 am

If you made a drive using current areal density, but at 3600RPM, what would it be used for??? I'm thinking of external drives and other performance-insensitive applications.

Imagine how quiet such a drive could be, and how little power it would draw. (If it's any indication, Seagate's old Medalist XE line consumed <2W at idle...)
Information is far more fragile than the HDDs it's stored on. Being an afterthought is no excuse for a bad product.

My PC: Core i3 4130 on GA‑H87M‑D3H with GT640 OC 2GiB and 2 * 8GiB Kingston HyperX 1600MHz, Kingston SA400S37120G and WD3003FZEX‑00Z4SA0, Pioneer BDR‑209DBKS and Optiarc AD‑7200S, Seasonic G‑360, Chenbro PC31031, Linux Mint Cinnamon 20.3.
User avatar
LongRunner
Moderator
 
Posts: 1030
Joined: May 17th, 2013, 5:48 pm
Location: Albany, Western Australia

Re: How about a modern 3600RPM drive???

Postby c_hegge » October 24th, 2013, 12:27 pm

TBH, I doubt if anyone would buy such a drive.
User avatar
c_hegge
Seasoned Veteran
 
Posts: 1632
Joined: March 16th, 2011, 8:45 pm
Location: North Coast, NSW, Australia

Re: How about a modern 3600RPM drive???

Postby shovenose » November 16th, 2013, 11:37 pm

c_hegge wrote:TBH, I doubt if anyone would buy such a drive.

Would be fine for low cost USB 2.0 externals. Slower spinning drives create less heat and are better against being banged around. Perfect for an external drive.
User avatar
shovenose
Seasoned Veteran
 
Posts: 1898
Joined: March 16th, 2011, 5:36 pm

Re: How about a modern 3600RPM drive?

Postby LongRunner » November 17th, 2013, 1:05 am

shovenose wrote:Slower spinning drives...are better against being banged around.

Not really. The only “advantage”, shock-resistance wise, of reducing the spindle speed is reducing the severity of a head crash if it happens – but you don't want a head crash to happen in the first place, as if it happens, trouble is guaranteed.
Information is far more fragile than the HDDs it's stored on. Being an afterthought is no excuse for a bad product.

My PC: Core i3 4130 on GA‑H87M‑D3H with GT640 OC 2GiB and 2 * 8GiB Kingston HyperX 1600MHz, Kingston SA400S37120G and WD3003FZEX‑00Z4SA0, Pioneer BDR‑209DBKS and Optiarc AD‑7200S, Seasonic G‑360, Chenbro PC31031, Linux Mint Cinnamon 20.3.
User avatar
LongRunner
Moderator
 
Posts: 1030
Joined: May 17th, 2013, 5:48 pm
Location: Albany, Western Australia

How about a half-height drive with current tech?

Postby LongRunner » January 10th, 2015, 8:57 pm

Not that I think it's going to happen, but observing how slow areal density increases have become in recent times (1TB disks debuted back in 2011 and are still not far behind the state-of-the-art), it would be fun. :D

For the uninitiated: The first form factor for PC HDDs — and floppy drives — was known as 5.25″ full height, although none of the dimensions were really 5.25″: Width was 5.75″ (146mm), height was 3.25″ (82.6mm), and depth was 8″ (203.2mm) — talk about HUGE. The disk diameter in those drives was usually 130mm (5.12″). Then a version with half the height was made — and remains in use for optical drives (although with the depth reduced on newer models). Early 3.5″ HDDs were the same height as those, but they were soon to be 1″ (25.4mm) high (referred to as low-profile, or sometimes as “third height” even though it's a bit less than that), like the 3.5″ FDD (although the half-height form remained in use for high-capacity enterprise drives up to 2001 — the last of which was Seagate's Barracuda 180); width is 4″ (101.6mm) and depth 5.75″. Disk size is 95mm on drives up to 7200RPM; faster-spinning drives used smaller media to reduce seek time and power consumption. Some drives are even thinner, of course with only 1 disk inside (or 2 in Seagate's Decathlon/Medalist SL family of the mid-90s).

Let's go with 8 disks. (Ancient enterprise drives had up to 12 but that was with much lower areal density, so they could make them thinner.) Some basic calculations suggest that:
  • At 7200RPM, the drive would overheat unless actively cooled.
  • At 5400RPM, the drive would get noticeably warm, but not too hot (unless installed in a fanless plastic enclosure).
  • At 4200RPM, it could be considered a “green” drive.
  • 3600RPM should be a piece of cake (by the standards of HDD engineering, anyway).
The main engineering problem would presumably be with the spindle bearings, as the added mass would put more stress on them (especially under shock conditions). (The aforementioned Barracuda 180 was only rated for 150G @ 2ms non-operational shock. Granted that was with ball bearings, and fluid-dynamic bearings are tougher — but even they have their limits.) The drive would also take quite a while to spin up (unless you raised the spin-up current to something ridiculous).

But probably the main reason why such a drive wouldn't be viable, is simply because half-height drives physically won't fit most systems. An array of five 8-disk drives may be a tad more reliable overall than one of eight 5-disk drives — or may not be. At least in the past, the difference in reliability between drives of the same series with different head counts would pale into insignificance compared to the differences between series, and the influences of how the drives are treated. (Granted, drives with fewer disks will draw less power and therefore run cooler, all else being equal. But that's an indirect effect, and you can compensate with more — or larger, or faster — fannage.)

So I don't think the "retro" appeal of such a drive would be enough to sell it. :D
User avatar
LongRunner
Moderator
 
Posts: 1030
Joined: May 17th, 2013, 5:48 pm
Location: Albany, Western Australia

Re: How about a modern 3600RPM drive?

Postby LongRunner » November 23rd, 2023, 1:11 am

A late update: There actually was one in 2008, the Fujitsu MEA3320BT.
It was only sold to Japanese OEMs for consumer A/V applications, but it existed nonetheless.
User avatar
LongRunner
Moderator
 
Posts: 1030
Joined: May 17th, 2013, 5:48 pm
Location: Albany, Western Australia


Return to Hard Drives

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 9 guests

cron