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Western Digital Working On a 20,000 RPM Drive

Posted by kdawson on from the positively-supersonic dept.

MrKaos writes "Western Digital seems to be preparing for the onslaught of solid-state drives set to impact its market by developing a 20,000 rpm hard drive. Similar to the VelociRaptor line of drives, the new drives are speculated to be offering lower capacity as a tradeoff for faster seek and write times." This report out of Taipei is the only word on the rumored WD 20K drive. It's said to be a 2.5" drive in a 3.5" enclosure, for efficiency of cooling — the arrangement the Register enjoyed poking fun at when the 10K drive was upgraded last month.

7 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Solid State by jay-be-em · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Economics.

    --
    "Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
  2. Is there a point to this? by Ostsol · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Is there still really a point to huge RPMs? As data density increases, speed should increase naturally. Move over the same distance at the same speed on a drive with twice the density should mean that one has read twice the data in the same amount of time -- therefore reading speed is twice as fast, right? This should even work on low-capacity drives by simply using small, high-data-density disks.

    1. Re:Is there a point to this? by hedwards · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, not right, that's assuming that the writes are being done sequentially. Hard disks are random access devices, and while they can definitely do sequential reads and writes, and quite a bit faster, as soon as the files are not next to each other or are fragmented you're going to lose that advantage.

    2. Re:Is there a point to this? by Detritus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You can't just wave a magic wand and double the density. Many of these things are interrelated in a complex manner. Increased density requires new head designs, new and improved electronics, new coatings for the platters, etc.

      --
      Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
  3. Re:Add heads? by vikstar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Good idea. I for one would prefer to go solid state.

    --
    The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
  4. Re:Add heads? by ka9dgx · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I'd go even further... use the old 5 1/4 "half height" form factor, stack 8 platters in it, with 4 sets of heads, spin it at 5400 rpm to keep the power requirements down to reasonable.
    This would give you 8 platters * 2 sides * 400 Gbit/in^2 * 50 in^2 (estimated working area surface area per platter) ==> 40 Terabytes in a single package, with an average access time on the order of 5 millisecond, and a sustainable transfer rate of at least 300 Megabytes/Second.
    Even without the 4 sets of heads, that would still be a 40 Terabyte drive!

    As far as RAID goes, it's just one drive, it's all or nothing, so don't think it would count as it's own mirror.

    --Mike--

  5. The product will be dead on arrival by bogaboga · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I am afraid the 20,000 rpm drive might be dead on arrival! Isn't the world "going SSD," whose advantages include faster start-up times, low read latency times, "mechanical" reliability and absolute silence while working?

    Laptops have SSDs, next will be desktops increasing chances that Western Digital's product will be dead on arrival.