John,
I am presuming, from IBM's and Fujitsu's predictions of second actuator models in two years, that there is only so much that can be done to speed up data transfer rates. For sure Ultra SCSI, 1394, and Fibre Channel along with higher rotational speeds, represent vast improvements but a second actuator goes a long way to improving rotational latency (presumably cutting it in half at least), greatly improving seek time. My question is whether or not those predictions include a second read/write channel in the drive or will both actuators seek from the same signal source? In any case, the drift of all this is to take advantage of greater bandwidth communications and a clear trend to more and more mission critical applications. Its a netcentric view, which IMO is a clear trend, that I happen to believe will be good for disk drive makers.
Best,
Stitch. |
