Arno Wagner wrote:
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage YKhan wrote:
They're talking about integrating flash with hard disks, as well as
increasing the sector size from 512 bytes to 4096 bytes.
Revamping Hard Disk Architecture
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1901955,00.asp
This has been around for some time. The flash does not really help,
unless you write very littel to disk. Personally I think SRAM
and batteries are a better choice, also because flash has relatively
low number of write cycles before it breaks. Not so bad with a disk
mapped 1:1 to flash (e.g. because it is entirely flash), but a serious
problem if a small flash has to buffer all writes to a large disk.
Maybe they are just trtying to create disks that break after 2
years or so...
Note that SRAM+battery has been around for at least a deacde in more
expensive RAID controllers, so the basic idea is old.
As to 4096 Byte sectors, I frankly do not see the point.
The point is that that allows more data to be stored on
the drive, essentially because less is wasted for headers.
Multi-sector transfer stream more than 512 bytes on one go already.
Different issue.
Clustering also provides the possibility to
use larger than 512Byte as allocatioon unit.
I think this is mainly some HDD vendor trying to make
themselves more interesting to a public that does not
really understand what they are talking about.
It isnt just one vendor.