3 ms·

Well that would explain it. I’ve been trying to Google it and it and everything I’ve found matches what you’re saying. Thank you. You’d have to make sure that

by MBCook 2y ago

Well that would explain it. I’ve been trying to Google it and it and everything I’ve found matches what you’re saying. Thank you. You’d have to make sure that your data is always on different sets of platters to take advantage of the double throughput though. You could get 2x throughput if it was all on platter 1. With the misalignment issue you mention exist if we were using multiple heads? If things were ALWAYS done in parallel across the heads didn’t wouldn’t the tracks always have to have the same micro alignment as well? Wouldn’t the problem only exist if a track on platter A and a track on platter B were written separately?

wmf 2y ago
Tracks are now so narrow that thermal expansion might throw the alignment out of whack.
- ssl-3 2y ago
  IIRC, hard drives have had the problem of thermal expansion vs track density for decades now. I helped build a small recording studio around the turn of the century, and at that time "AV rated" drives were a thing that demanded a premium price. These differed from other drives in that they were capable of continuous use, whereas other drives might briefly go out to lunch periodically to re-do their thermal calibration. This was considered important by some, since it was critical that the process not "miss" any data due to the hard drive being late to the party during any part of a recording or mixdown session. These were once new potential problems in the recording space (previously, we used tape -- a linear medium for a linear event). We don't talk about tcal these days and terms like "AV ready" have dropped from the data storage lexicon. I can only assume that it ceased to be a practical problem somehow. Maybe tcal happens fast enough now that any writes can be caught in cache, or maybe tcal happens invisibly as a continuous process, or maybe data rates for spinning rust have improved enough that we're no longer so close to the edge of hardware performance that it ever matters, and/or maybe operating systems and recording software have improved enough that it's just not an issue worth discussion. (These days, cutting a music track of ridiculous complexity on a singular MacBook is a complete snoozefest for the hardware. But it hasn't always been this way...)

by MBCook 2y ago

wmf 2y ago

Tracks are now so narrow that thermal expansion might throw the alignment out of whack.

ssl-3 2y ago
IIRC, hard drives have had the problem of thermal expansion vs track density for decades now. I helped build a small recording studio around the turn of the century, and at that time "AV rated" drives were a thing that demanded a premium price. These differed from other drives in that they were capable of continuous use, whereas other drives might briefly go out to lunch periodically to re-do their thermal calibration. This was considered important by some, since it was critical that the process not "miss" any data due to the hard drive being late to the party during any part of a recording or mixdown session. These were once new potential problems in the recording space (previously, we used tape -- a linear medium for a linear event). We don't talk about tcal these days and terms like "AV ready" have dropped from the data storage lexicon. I can only assume that it ceased to be a practical problem somehow. Maybe tcal happens fast enough now that any writes can be caught in cache, or maybe tcal happens invisibly as a continuous process, or maybe data rates for spinning rust have improved enough that we're no longer so close to the edge of hardware performance that it ever matters, and/or maybe operating systems and recording software have improved enough that it's just not an issue worth discussion. (These days, cutting a music track of ridiculous complexity on a singular MacBook is a complete snoozefest for the hardware. But it hasn't always been this way...)