The hard drive as a sequential storage medium

[NogginBoink]

Found a fascinating read here about disk drives.

Among other things, it says that the USPS has better bandwidth than the Internet when transferring massive amounts of data, and with very large disks, random access slows things down so much that we must start looking at the disk drive as a sequential storage medium.

I don't have many comments on this... I'm still absorbing it... but it's fascinating.

 

[KaptainK]

Awesome article...very informative.

Personally I've always opt'd for the quick, low-density drives over the lumbering giants...at least where it counts the most. For general storage (non O/S or apps) you'd do fine to use a biggy...but for boot drives go with fast as possible.
How long for this transition to be industy wide I wonder?
And since were talking about drives quicker that the norm, what ever happened to high-density solid-state and fibre-CH? They used to be everywhere...you don't hear much of them anymore.

 

[Smilin]

We had to do some math problem in data communnictions class. I'm not sure of the details and the numbers aren't perfect but it went something like this:

Suppose you have a large transport jet that can carry 10 Tons of cargo. Now supposed you fill it with 700MB CD's that weigh one ouce each. Fly the jet from say New York to LA and the total trip is 5 hours long. What's the "bandwidth" of the data connection you just made from NY to LA?

Hehe yep, I'm sure the internet looks like the pony express compared to todays US Postal Service.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

12.4GB/sec, or about 100Gbps

Now, replace those 1 ounce CD-r disks with 1LB 250GB drives...
278GB/sec, or 2.2Tbps

Highs:
Low cost.
High bandwidth.
Easy to secure.
Large packet size.
Extremely flexible.
Cost dependant on bandwidth used.

Lows:
Very high latency.
Cost increases signifigantly in cases of packet loss.

 

[NogginBoink]

Originally posted by: Demon-Xanth
12.4GB/sec, or about 100Gbps

Now, replace those 1 ounce CD-r disks with 1LB 250GB drives...
278GB/sec, or 2.2Tbps

Lows:
Very high latency.
Cost increases signifigantly in cases of packet loss.

You do have a penchant for understatement, don't you?