Most Dense Platter?

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Mankey
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Most Dense Platter?

Post by Mankey » Mon Jan 21, 2008 7:08 pm

What hard drive on the market now sports the most dense platter? Its so hard to keep up with all the moving technology nowadays.

I thought it was the F1 series, but I am hearing that a lot of users are experiencing failed drives, which makes me wary.

I'm mainly interested due to performance.

JimX
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Post by JimX » Tue Jan 22, 2008 1:55 pm

New WD320, 1 platter!

line
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Post by line » Tue Jan 22, 2008 2:28 pm

What? Where? :shock:

Kaleid
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Post by Kaleid » Tue Jan 22, 2008 2:29 pm

http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/13980

I'm hoping for a 2 two platter drive from WD. But I have to see how much noise they make first..

JimX
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Post by JimX » Tue Jan 22, 2008 2:31 pm

Damn you're fast!

line
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Post by line » Tue Jan 22, 2008 2:38 pm

That's awesome. Hope there'll be an easy way to tell apart the single platter drive from the dual platter ones.

Mankey
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Post by Mankey » Tue Jan 22, 2008 4:40 pm

Wow, thats incredible. So the only version with this platter right now is a single platter version?

Any news on a 2 platter version? 640 gigs would be perfect.

Kaleid
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Post by Kaleid » Wed Jan 23, 2008 5:00 am

The 320GB drive is already available. Someone here brave enough to try it out?

dhanson865
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Post by dhanson865 » Wed Jan 23, 2008 11:40 am

wow, the WD is 320GB per platter, Samsung has 334GB per Platter.

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/ ... subtype=63


I guess SSDs are pushing spindles to be more efficient.

dhanson865
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Post by dhanson865 » Wed Jan 23, 2008 11:47 am

line wrote:That's awesome. Hope there'll be an easy way to tell apart the single platter drive from the dual platter ones.
One way I know is that the old 320GB drives had 8MB cache. The 320GB platters are going to be paired with no less than 16MB cache. So looking for a 320GB model with 16MB cache should be a reasonable clue.

line
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Post by line » Thu Jan 24, 2008 7:03 pm

Nope, looking at cache size won't help because WD has had both eight-megabytes (WD3200AAJS) and sixteen-megabytes (WD3200AAKS) 7200rpm desktop models with dual-platter configuration. The problem with WD's naming scheme is that it doesn't reveal platter size, and thus the new drive might just retain the AAKS suffix, leaving us in confusion.

As our friend whiic has anticipated:
Most of us were happy when WD took that "AA" as part of model number, and I was one of them. It gave us hope of WD actually tell the customers what variant the drive was and what characteristics it has. For example WD5000KS originally had 4 platters and when new naming scheme was applied WD5000AAKS was given to new variants only, that is 3-platter variants. This, unfortunately, is a one time only joy, because unlike speculated, "AA" does not stand for drive generation (thus, a future 2-platter variant of WD5000 will NOT be WD5000ABKS) but a market segment. Future 2-platter variant based on 250GB platters will have the exact same model number: WD5000AAKS and there's no way a customer can tell by looking at the drive at retailer's shelf or online retailer's website whether it's a 2-platter or 3-platter drive. The manufacturer can tell it by the extension to model number (such as 00TMA or 22TMA) but the meaning of those model numbers are not told to the customer, thus the customer is the one gambling.

So, do enjoy the fact that there's now WDxxxxAAyy and WDxxxxyy because while you still have firmware variance between different subvariants of a model, the future is much much worse... like it was in time before introduction of "AA". You newer knew how many platters your drive had

dhanson865
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Post by dhanson865 » Fri Jan 25, 2008 10:55 am

It will help, it won't be definitive.

It is very confusing to find all the platter sizes a drive series has used.

All 8MB or lower cache drives from WD won't have the 320GB platters. The majority of WD product lines have 8MB or lower cache sizes for drives under 500GB.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=257
Old Caviars are still for sale at 40GB, 80, 160GB. They have a 2MB cache

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=307
WD Caviar SE 160, 250, 320, 400, 500 have a 8MB cache and 80GB or 107GB platters depending on manufacturing date.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=336
WD Caviar GP 500, 750, 1000 have 16MB cache and 250GB Platters

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=311
WD Caviar SE16 250, 320, 400, 500, 750 have a 16MB cache (80GB, 107GB, or 125GB platters on the older ones, 160GB or 250GB Platters for the AA model numbers)

http://www.wdc.com/en/company/releases/ ... F6C62FF%7D
320 GB-per-platter technology will be deployed across WD's desktop, enterprise, CE and external hard drive product lines, including additional capacity points, throughout this calendar year. [2008]
I'm assuming that means the 2MB cache drives will be discontinued and the 8MB cache drives will be as well. If they move the 8GB cache drives from "mainstream" to "value" they could just put the 320GB platters in the green power and SE16 series.

How do you interpret that?

KenAF
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Post by KenAF » Fri Jan 25, 2008 10:51 pm

So what is model / part number of this new single-platter, 320GB drive?

One article suggested that it would be called the WD3200AAKS, but that is the name used for the existing dual 160Gb platter design.

frostedflakes
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Post by frostedflakes » Fri Jan 25, 2008 11:35 pm

Seagate seems to be lagging behind, when are their 7200.12 supposed to show up? I'd assume they're supposed to bump the density up above 300GB/platter as well (current drives are what, 250GB/platter?).

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