Seagate has introduced a brand new know-how it says can dramatically improve the efficiency of mechanical arduous drives. In keeping with the corporate, its upcoming ‘Multi Actualtor’ drives will be capable of “double the info efficiency of its future-generation arduous drives in hyperscale knowledge facilities”. Whereas arduous drives sometimes ship with only a single actuator that every one the arms in a drive are linked to, Seagate now says that it’s within the means of growing ‘multi actuator’ drives that may have two actuators on the identical pivot level, every able to performing learn or write operations independently on any of the platters at any given level.
Whereas Seagate is selling its multi actuator know-how as ‘new’, it actually isn’t so within the strictest sense of the time period. The corporate had introduced mechanical drives with a number of actuators way back to in 2009, however these weren’t launched commercially as a result of the corporate believed that they received’t be viable commercially.
Now that the tech is lastly able to hit primetime, the corporate is dispelling notions {that a} drive with a number of actuators will truly present up as completely different drives, saying that whereas “the host pc can deal with a single Twin Actuator drive as if it had been two separate drives”, it is going to nonetheless present up “as one worldwide identify to the consumer with two entry streams out there for communication. The drive is one quantity however cut up into two areas that the consumer can talk to”. The corporate has additional clarified that even drives with quad-actuators, if carried out sooner or later, will proceed to be reported as a single machine by the PC.
It stays to be seen whether or not Seagate’s upcoming new tech is ready to make HDDs as soon as once more related within the shopper market that’s now being taken over by super-fast SSDs for probably the most half, but when the corporate can ship what it guarantees, it’s undoubtedly excellent news for server farms and datacenters.
