Can we write the data as a single track, that way they could spin very slowly, like a vinly record.
Thanks.
In: 1
We do write the data as a single track but you are restricted in how small you can make the little bits. Making the little bits smaller increases the rate you can read data at a certain speed, but also just ramping up the speed is a nice way to get more data out without needing fancier platters
There’s also the problem of latency. Your standard hard drive spins at 7200 RPM, about 120 times per second. If you request a file on it that happens to have just passed the read head then you need to wait for it to come all the way around, this will take about 8 milliseconds which for a processor that completes instructions in fractions of nanoseconds is basically an eternity
So we spin them faster to reduce latency. Old high speed HDDs could spin at 15,000 RPM so it only took 4 ms for the disk to come back around, they could also read out data about twice as fast as a 7200 HDD built with the same size bits on its platter.
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