Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!att-ih!alberta!ubc-cs!uw-beaver!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!bwong
From: bwong@sundc.UUCP (Brian Wong)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Disk drives -- speed of?
Summary: "architecture" of disk drives
Message-ID: <2746@sundc.UUCP>
Date: 16 Apr 88 01:42:43 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Vienna, VA
Lines: 15

Perhaps this isn't the most appropriate place for this, but...

I have seen many disk drives in my time, but every hard/fixed disk/dasd
(whatever) has rotated at 3600 rpm.  Given that it seems that many other
approaches have been tried in an attempt to speed up disk drives, and that
particularly in fixed-head disks, the rotational latency is a significant
contributor to the amount of time it takes to make a disk access, why don't
we see disks running faster than 3600 rpm?  It seems that with disks
continually getting smaller (radially, of course, not capacity-wise), it
seems like it would be easier to get (and keep) them moving faster.

I know that drums went at other speeds.  Why not disks?

If you feel this goes in some other discussion, follow up to there and
mail me where to look.