HDD Confusion???

[Radith]

Dear All;

Can a hard drive have more than eight platters??
Is the more platters the better??

Will the old HDD have less than eight platters??

Thanx in advance

Radith

 

[kony]

Dear All;

Can a hard drive have more than eight platters??

In theory, yes
In practice, no, it'd take a full-height housing just to hold them all.
Most drives have 1-3.

Is the more platters the better??

Not necessarily, generally newer is better, including higher RPM, platter
density (GB per platter). 2-3 platters may reduce seek time but it's not
all that significant a difference.

Will the old HDD have less than eight platters??

Yes, but why the questions?
Use the newest drive model available.

 

[Alien Zord]

In theory, yes
In practice, no, it'd take a full-height housing just to hold them all.
Most drives have 1-3.

The latest Hitachi 400GB has 5 platters in 1" (25.4mm) height.
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/7k400/7k400.htm
Amazing. My first 1GB drive, a Micropolis 4110 SCSI, has 5 platters, 9
heads. Still works perfectly, has DOS 6.22, Win311 on it for fun and test
purposes.

 

[DaveW]

No existing harddrive that I'm aware of has anywhere near 8 platters.
Typically they have one, two, or up to three.

 

[~misfit~]

The latest Hitachi 400GB has 5 platters in 1" (25.4mm) height.
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/7k400/7k400.htm
Amazing. My first 1GB drive, a Micropolis 4110 SCSI, has 5 platters, 9
heads. Still works perfectly, has DOS 6.22, Win311 on it for fun and
test purposes.

And my old faithful Maxtor SCSI 1.2GB had eight platters, 16 heads. It just
finally gave up (too many bad sectors, registry corruption, in a win 98SE
PC) last week.

 

[Mike Walsh]

I once had a 1" drive with 6 platters. Most now have 4 or fewer. All other things being equal, fewer platters are better. If 2 drives have the same capacity the drive with fewer platters will be faster because of the higher data density.