On Thu, 2002-01-03 at 18:38, Anders Johansson wrote:
I thought disk size played in on the seek times, or is that wrong (I'm no hardware wiz, to say the least).
Some of each. The higher the areal density, the (statistically) quicker the seek time is going to be; the same for spindle speed. If you crank up the RPM fast enough, and cram enough data per square mm of platter space, you could theoretically have a single side of a single platter with <0.1ms of seek time. We don't have that kind of technology yet, though. :) Conversely, the faster the platter is spinning, the less likely (statistically) the head is to actually hit the track it was looking for on the first try.
The 181 GB SCSI drive at 7200 rpm has a lower seek time than the 10 GB IDE drive at 7200 rpm.
Probably due in part to data density per platter. Seek time refers to how long it takes for the head to go from "idle" to "reading" mode, including *seeking* to the location on the platter. The 10GB disk is probably 1.5 sides; about 3.3GB per side on two platters. The 180GB is how many platters? Then divide the storage by the number of used sides on those platters; the areal densitiy of the platter is very different. Also much more expensive per unit, but...
And at about $4/GB lower price.
Interesting point. I personally don't need 181GB of disk space at the moment, but that's a good example of when it *is* economical to buy SCSI. -- -=|JP|=- Need a good geek? I'm unemployed! '01 B15 SE/PP | http://www.xanga.com/cowboydren/ | />< '95 SL2 Auto | cowboydren @ yahoo . com | _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com