Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!MATHOM.GANDALF.CS.CMU.EDU!lindsay From: lindsay@MATHOM.GANDALF.CS.CMU.EDU (Donald Lindsay) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Disk drives. Message-ID: <10058@pt.cs.cmu.edu> Date: 31 Jul 90 16:52:17 GMT References: Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI Lines: 21 In article deweeset@turing.cs.rpi.edu (Thomas DeWeese) writes: >...the fact that they are not >evacuated is the major reason why the heads are able to fly so close to the >disk media. There's talk of head altitudes of 0.05 microns - that's 500 angstroms. Combined with two micron track pitches, the mechanical aspects are getting pretty tense. The problem with putting 10 GB on a 3.5" disk (a published research goal) is that the access structure has to be treated as non-rigid. Since it also has to be moved rapidly, the engineering is unobvious, to me at least. Hence, my rather naive wish that they'd find a way to use a simple head stick, with a piezo per head, or some such. The major trend in the _use_ of disk drives, is to carry them around in portables. Does anyone know how much of a compromise it is to get ruggedness? -- Don D.C.Lindsay