Single-Platter Harddrives?

I've been searching around Google and was surprised at how difficult it was to obtain information on the number of platters that notebook drives ship with. Not even the detailed spec sheets on the Seagate Momentus and WD Scorpio lines reveal how many platters their drives use.

What are some good resources to find out the number of platters a drive contains? I have a stock 80gb HD with my laptop that I wish to swap out with a reliable, 250Gb single-platter drive. I've been eyeing the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 250Gb, but that doesn't seem like it will be coming out until early next year, and I'm not even sure if it will be a single-platter drive.

Anyone know of any 250gb single-platter notebook drives? Preferably at 7200rpm.

 

There is no mobile 250GB 7200RPM Single-Platter drive at the moment. The first will probably be the 250GB 7200.4....

You can go for the 160GB 7200RPM drives....

You can buy a Dual-Platter drive, and follow a good Partitioning Strategy, in order to to have the best of both --> space, and fast R/W rates; access times.

 

What would said strategy be?

 

In Layman's Terms --> HDD RAW > I^st Partition for the Main OS [30% of total space] > II^nd Partition for secondary OS (if any) or for frequently accessed files [Same size as the first] > III^rd Partition for dumping files that won't be accessed frequently.

 

I was wondering that: So when you create the "first" partition, does the hdd allocate it on the outer surface of the disk or the inner surface of the disk? I think the transfer rate on the outer disk area should be faster since they have higher linear speed compared to the inner surface...

 

Yes, partitioning starts from the outermost track and moves inwards. So, generally the first partition you make on a RAW drive (HDD with no partitions, and only unallocated space) will be the I^st partition.

AFAIK, the actuator arm/shaft does not have to do much work for the data stored on the outermost tracks when it needs to be read/written/accessed, etc....

 

This is actually a good question. Aside from calling the company and inquiring directly, I don't know of any software that would tell you this information. HDTach and HDTune are merely benchmark utilities.

 

Normally the datasheets have sufficient info to let you know the no. of platters a drive has.

 

I have evidence to support this. I normally split my HDD into 5 partitions and the SiSoftware Sandra file system benchmark results show that C: is the fastest and G: is the slowest.

For example, get into the small print on page 2 of the Hitachi 5K500 data sheet and you will see that the 250GB version has 2 heads and 1 disk. The same applies for the Seagate 5400.6.

However, not all manufacturers are so helpful. Neither WD nor Samsung do not provide this level of detail although you can assume that the Samsung drives with a weight less than 100g have only one platter.

John

 

Yeah, it's better to partition a larger drive. You can get a good read/write of about 80MB/s of a 320GB 7200rpm drive if you partition correctly.
This is not any old information on how to get a faster HDD or so, just many that's unknowing about it!

 

Partitioning helps to keep file fragments close to each other. Windows in C: where speed is appreciated and old / backup stuff in the last partition where speed is not important. Also, if a partition table gets corrupted (not so common these days) then not everything is lost.

John

 

I'm surprised there is'nt a one platter version of the WD5000BEVT available. At least I can't find it.

 

Exactly! There is only good things about doing this in my eyes!

 

Hi.

I thought 250gb was the maximum platter size at the moment in 2.5" drives , so i cannot see it going to 500gb per platter for a year or two.

We might all be starting to use high capacity SSD drives by then.

Regards

John.

 

Samsung kinda gives the info of "Max Formatted Space per Disk", which does give an idea of how many platters a drive will have. I think Toshiba gives info regarding the no. of heads/platters of their drives. I don't know whats up with WDC. One has to kinda compare performance and the release dates to figure out the disk/head config for their drives.

I think there is already a WD2500BEVT which uses 160GB platters. So, if they come up with a 250GB HDD which uses 250GB platters, don't know how the nomenclature will be done.

Seagate's 120GB 5400.6 should be quite good, and kinda responsive.

 

I think PhilFlow meant that it should be 250GB one platter drives out there, as there is 250GB platters in the 500GB. Though it could only be 5400rpms as there isn't any 7200rpm available in 500GB.

Just a guess though

 

This thread is interesting, but I have a n00b question

Can someone explain what platters are???

Thanks

 

There are 250GB 5400RPM drives available from Seagate and Hitachi, that utilize 250GB platters (None from WDC).

There is a 160GB 5K500.B as well, which should be extremely fast/responsive and cheap, considering the low disk space, and that it uses 2 heads on a single disk, so the 2 heads should cover only the outer 80GBs (tracks) on both platter faces, and the inner 45GB shall be unused on both faces of the platter. (Probably )

@RaYYan: Check out this article.

 

Thanks I'll check it out