Improve performance and reliability of Hard Disk Drive

[2fast]

Just two ideas:

Simil RAID-4 or RAID-5 architecture within platters drive to improve reliability of entire drive.

When one sector of “simil array” did fails, it can be reallocated without data loss.

Pro: more reliability, more read speed, relatively simple implementation with minumum of 3 heads/2 platters.

Cons: more complexity firmware and processor/controller , less amount of data avalaible, less write speed performance.

Single arm with two “L-shaped” or “Y-Shaped” head to minimize access time.

When the requested sector is in the first half of the drive , data was readed from “sub-head 1” otherwise from “sub-head 2”.

Pro: half average access time, relatively simply firmware implementation.

Cons: more head complexity and weight, solve problem with head parking.

Thanks & Bye

Luke

[FailedHDDs]

also imitate RAID1

I’ve always thought that there should be a jumper on disks to div. the capacity

for single platter: write the same data on both sides of the platter

for two platter: write the same data on both platters

for the three & five platter oddballs: write the tops as one cylinder and the bottoms as the mirror cylinder

eg.

• a 500GB with 2 platters would become a 250GB in Mirror on the platters

• a 2TB with 4 platters would become a 1TB

this could be used to support those with older OS which don’t go above 2TB

thus a new 3TB disk with “mirror” jumper would become a 1.5TB

and when they push 4TB disks add the jumper and voila a 2TB with internal data mirror

[Nesvic]

[RoloX2]

HDDs already remap bad sectors to a reserved area on the disk to keep it reliable.

Having a “simulated” RAID 1 on one drive isn’t going to help if the drive dies; all this would effectvely do is make half the disk a reserved area for bad sectors. 

Additionally, this would double the cost since usable space would be halved.  If you want RAID1, buy two disks.

[jubei04]