Cheap RAID alternative (just crazy idea)

I thought this while I was drinking coffy in the morning.
I would like to know if this is possible or is it already on sales.

My idea here is that they could make a HDD that would have 2 heads reading the same disk. It would have RAID controler built it.

Made a picture.

i dont see a reason why it couldnt work...but im sure there is one

Two issues I see would come to pass, could be overcomed, but at what cost.

Issue one, the drive acuator would need to sit at opposite ends of the drive, thus changing the dimenision of the 3.5 inch drive chasis, no big deal, but would require a retool

Issue two, I think can be solved by cache and more cpu power onboard to handle NQC using 2 arms with 2 to 8 heads a piece.

I like the idea but like dartdana said it would require some retooling.
Mehh I would rather spend some money on a RAM drive.

this came up once before here...althoguh it may have been based as a cdrom question.

no need for a raid controller, having two heads the onboard would be designed for them to work as one...similar to raid, without the latency issues.

IT seems to me a larger 5.25" drive could be created with slightly larger disks, a nd more of them. one that took up two 5.25 bays could easily fit 10 platters, as large as 5" across. the size of cd's.
Rather than that, i would say design the drive with three or four drive arms, and make it a 10 or 15K speed. similar or slightly larger disk size.

This would create a drive that would be faster than heck, and store a-lot too...but its not a normal drive and would have some standardisation issues.
I would imagine a drive with this speed could easily overcome the ata 133 standard, and have to be implimented with decond gen sata, or even dual sata ports....and have a very special driver.

its fun to think about, but nobody would put the money into the project to start producing them.

Como said:

This would create a drive that would be faster than heck, and store a-lot too...but its not a normal drive and would have some standardisation issues.
I would imagine a drive with this speed could easily overcome the ata 133 standard, and have to be implimented with decond gen sata, or even dual sata ports....and have a very special driver.

Click to expand...

Hmmm I donno if it would actually push the 133 over so easily... Burst speed more than likely it would hit the 133mb mark but even then its more about the amount of cache sitting there. But substained transfer rates? Single drive 74gb raptors are just pushing 65ish MB... RAID 0-ing two of them gets about 112mb... Ok so it would be close... damn... if I were to take into acount the lesser latency... damn I think I just proved my self boarder line wrong... (sorry for the rambling I haven't slept much in the past two weeks.)

But still you think even with a faster rotation due to a larger platter and more heads it would push into 2nd Gen SATA?

imagin 2 of those 2 headed drives in raid *drools uncontrollably*

Companies in the past usually have stuck with the tried and true method. I like the idea of makeing a 5.25" drives as a "specialty" drive. It would allow for companies to set up a small number of machines to make the "super" drive while keeping with the normal harddrives.

The only issue I see (in addition to those mentioned) is that the drive would have a harder time figuring out exactly what to do. To use two heads efficiently, one needs to be sure that they're both reading different areas of the disk, which is difficult with the current way the drive recieves data. If it recieves instructions to read several sectors in a row, the second head will either do nothing or possibly slow down the drive as it tries to access a sector that would be quicker served by the first head.

It shouldn't be too hard to make drives intelligent enough to make it worthwhile, but I doubt drive manufacturers would want to invest the money in a technology that may never see the light of day (except in extreme end servers).

JigPu

It would have been a great idea 15 yrs ago, but now I see mechanical hdd's going by the way of the dodo bird, and the standard will be ram drives...I can also see the day when we can turn off the pc (without the safe to shutdown msg) and having everything as it was when you turn it back on..including the unsaved word doc you didn't save b4 shutting down, and almost instant bootup...looking 4ward to it

I do belive that this was brought up before and if I remember there was a company that made a drive like this but like all good ideas that come before there time it died fast.