Re: [gentoo-user] Normal disk speed?

[Peter Humphrey <peter@humphrey.ukfsn.org>]

On Thursday 30 September 2010 14:10:42 Florian Philipp wrote:

> An HDD gets slower when you read the inner tracks.  The angular
> velocity is constant (5400 RPM) while the tangential velocity gets
> lower with the radius.

Are you telling us that the length of a stored bit is constant? I'd have 
thought it was the time needed to read or write a bit that was constant; 
otherwise the electronics would get extremely complex. In that case it's 
the angular velocity that counts, not the linear velocity, and it 
matters not which track your data are on. (If a block goes past the head 
twice as fast, it also occupies twice the space, so you're back where 
you were.)

That's the way it was with our imposing new 2MB disks in 1974, anyway. 
They occupied boxes four feet tall and six feet long, and had external 
air systems; I was one of those responsible for the maintenance; we were 
sent on a training course specifically for the disks. I can't remember 
who made them, but they were part of a Ferranti Argus 500 system at the 
then national grid control centre.

Maybe technology has changed since then.

-- 
Rgds
Peter.          Linux Counter 5290, 1994-04-23.