overclock hard drive

[HFS+]

is it possible to overclock a hard drive? Like make the rotaional speed faster?

 

[greenhawk]

the rotational speed would require several changes to the drive itself, though IIRC it is not possible for the average person.

It use to be possible with IDE drives to a limited extent as the clock that drove the transfer could be tweaked up a few percent, but that effected buffer to host speeds. Sata separated the clock so not a option.

You might be able to boost the power of the head seeking, but you will suffer in over shooting your desired track more often, so loosing performance overall..

of course, replacing it with a faster drive would be faster and cheaper. Even changing to a SSD would be a option to get a faster drive.

 

[exdeath]

Yes. Enable the SSD option.

 

[kbp]

^^^

 

[jpeyton]

Swap in a Dremel motor.

 

[Zorander]

Even if such a thing were possible, latency would most likely suffer exponentially.

 

[chubbyfatazn]

Put a bunch of stickers on it, preferably those depicting characters from My Little Pony. Make sure the PCB isn't red, black, blue, purple, or teal. Rainbow PCBs denote maximum rotational speed. Also, my porn drive seems to run faster than all of my other drives. Maybe that's because its rotational speed is 88 mph...

/buy an SSD

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Sort of. You could short stroke it.

 

[BFG10K]

Yep, short stroke it. Also put any data that needs fast access (OS/applications, etc) on the outer partition.

 

[PandaBear]

You cannot make anything that moves faster as a consumer. Everything inside the drive is actually analog and that means they are all tested and calibrated like any delicate machine.

What you can do, like others said, is to short stroke it by having small partition up front for your most speed sensitive data and then the not so critical data at the end. I raid 0ed 2 old drive together and move the program partition up front, and get a noticeable speed improvement.

 

[corkyg]

And, technically, you cannot overclock something that is not clocked in the first place. The short stroke idea can speed up access to data.

 

[ShadowVVL]

I don't see why they dont make disks short stroked with 320gb or so only on the outer edge.

 

[exdeath]

I don't see why they dont make disks short stroked with 320gb or so only on the outer edge.

It's called a Cheetah and VelociRaptor, hence why those drives are only 2.5" to begin with. Using the outer tracks of large diameter platters destroys rotational latency.

 

[BFG10K]

I don't see why they dont make disks short stroked with 320gb or so only on the outer edge.

That’s pointless for both the customer and the manufacturer. Consider a 640GB drive short-stroked to 320GB.

The manufacturer can’t reduce the price since the drive needs the same number of platters and heads to be short-stroked. So the customer pays for a 640GB drive but only gets 320GB capacity.

Better to ship the original 640GB and let the customer choose whether to short-stroke it or use the full capacity.

And contrary to popular opinion, smaller drives in the same series are not usually derived by short-stroking. They’re normally made by using fewer platters, fewer heads (i.e. some sides of platters are not used), and/or lower platter density. In those cases the manufacture can pass on the savings to the customer.

 

[BFG10K]

It's called a Cheetah and VelociRaptor, hence why those drives are only 2.5" to begin with. Using the outer tracks of large diameter platters destroys rotational latency.

That doesn’t make any sense. Also by “destroys” do you mean increases or decreases?

Short-stroking is done by keeping the platter radius the same but preventing the head from travelling as far inwards. If you reduce the radius the outer velocity reduces too, so you aren’t short-stroking anything.

Now, if the platters are the same radius then it would be pointless (and even potentially impossible) to use a 2.5” form factor.

My understanding is that 2.5” drives actually have a smaller platter radius than 3.5” drives, and this is done to keep momentum and stability under control at the higher rotation speeds (i.e. there’s less total mass to spin).

 

[Old Hippie]

is it possible to overclock a hard drive? Like make the rotaional speed faster?

 

[DominionSeraph]

It's called a Cheetah and VelociRaptor, hence why those drives are only 2.5" to begin with. Using the outer tracks of large diameter platters destroys rotational latency.

Rotational latency is the same across a drive. (Average latency is 1/2 rotation time which is the inverse of rotations per unit time.) And outer tracks are faster, hence "short stroking" which keeps the heads on the outer tracks.