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New hard disk architectures



 
 
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  #31  
Old December 18th 05, 12:26 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
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Default New hard disk architectures

On Sat, 17 Dec 2005 18:32:22 -0500, daytripper
wrote:

On Sat, 17 Dec 2005 16:24:38 -0500, George Macdonald
wrote:

On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 19:51:27 -0500, Yousuf Khan wrote:

George Macdonald wrote:
Two different initiatives though: the HDD mfrs are trying to extend the
life of rotating platter systems; Intel's Robson is a fast startup
"technology" http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123053,00.asp.


Well, flash isn't going to extend the life of the platters, it's only
good for the fast startup. In order to extend platter life you'd need
ram mostly.


I did not mean reduce wear of the platters but extend the lifetime of hard
disks in general as a mass storage solution, i.e. delay the switch over to
flash as a replacement for hard disks. It gets them a foot in the door
with the technology too... hopefully, from their POV, fending of Sandisk
et.al. from taking over the mass storage market eventually.


Until cost per bit for flash at least enters the same arena as magnetics -
never mind approaches parity - I doubt the magnetic media companies are all
that worried about flash encroaching in their bread-and-butter markets...


Not wholly for a while yet of course but as interface/burst speeds go up
way beyond off-the-platter speeds, if a hybrid is on the cards in the
interim, I'm sure they'd rather be the ones selling the bits.

--
Rgds, George Macdonald
  #32  
Old December 18th 05, 03:31 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
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Default New hard disk architectures

George Macdonald wrote:

On Sat, 17 Dec 2005 18:32:22 -0500, daytripper
wrote:

On Sat, 17 Dec 2005 16:24:38 -0500, George Macdonald
wrote:

On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 19:51:27 -0500, Yousuf Khan wrote:

George Macdonald wrote:
Two different initiatives though: the HDD mfrs are trying to extend
the life of rotating platter systems; Intel's Robson is a fast startup
"technology" http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123053,00.asp.


Well, flash isn't going to extend the life of the platters, it's only
good for the fast startup. In order to extend platter life you'd need
ram mostly.

I did not mean reduce wear of the platters but extend the lifetime of
hard disks in general as a mass storage solution, i.e. delay the switch
over to
flash as a replacement for hard disks. It gets them a foot in the door
with the technology too... hopefully, from their POV, fending of Sandisk
et.al. from taking over the mass storage market eventually.


Until cost per bit for flash at least enters the same arena as magnetics -
never mind approaches parity - I doubt the magnetic media companies are
all that worried about flash encroaching in their bread-and-butter
markets...


Not wholly for a while yet of course but as interface/burst speeds go up
way beyond off-the-platter speeds, if a hybrid is on the cards in the
interim, I'm sure they'd rather be the ones selling the bits.


They get their cut regardless--the only way some outfit that is not a hard
disk manufacturer could make such a thing is to start with a hard disk
bought from one of the manufacturers.

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)
  #33  
Old December 18th 05, 04:23 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
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Default New hard disk architectures

On Sun, 18 Dec 2005 11:09:37 +0000, The little lost angel wrote:

On Sat, 17 Dec 2005 22:47:41 -0500, Keith wrote:

OTOH, do people really pay more for 200GB drives? Ok, I bought one on
BlackFriday for $29 (I would have bought a smaller drive at $29). Will
people pay for a flash drive it it were a similar price and half the
capacity? ...forgetting the write-cyle issue. My bet is yes.


US$29 for a 200GB drive? New? I gotta get a truckload of these :P They
are going for like at least US$100 a piece here.


Yeah, Black Friday (the Friday after the US Thanksgiving holiday) is a
huge shopping day in the US. Some stores have "loss-leaders"[*] to get
people in the stores, hopeing they'll buy something else. In this case
Staples (and office supply chain) was selling 200GB Maxtor IDE drives for
$29. I also snagged a dual-layer DVD burner for $19 and a spindle of
50 DVD+Rs for $3. Of course there are "rebates" to be filled out
(on-line in this case), so there was more out of pocket than $29.
[*] A "loss-leader" is a product sold (usually at a loss, hence the name)
to generate traffic.

--
Keith
  #34  
Old December 19th 05, 06:29 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
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Default New hard disk architectures

Arno Wagner wrote:
I don't think they're talking about using flash in the sense of a
dynamic disk cache, but as a static disk cache, or a ramdisk in other
words. Namely, they're aiming to cache the boot sequence into the
flashdisk to speed up boot times.



That would not make much sense IMO.


Why?

As to 4096 Byte sectors, I frankly do not see the point. Multi-sector
transfer stream more than 512 bytes on one go already. Clustering also
provides the possibility to use larger than 512Byte as allocatioon
unit.



Well, they explained it in article, they're saying that the reason this
is needed is because with only 512 bytes you don't have enough bits for
error correcting code with today's big hard disks.



That is nonsense. The size of the disk has no impact on the per-sector
error corection. Maybe they mean that with 4096 byte sectors they
can use more efficient codes.


Yeah, that's what they meant. ECC is taking up too much of the disk real
estate these days.

Yousuf Khan
  #35  
Old December 19th 05, 01:13 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
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Default New hard disk architectures

Yousuf Khan wrote:

Arno Wagner wrote:
I don't think they're talking about using flash in the sense of a
dynamic disk cache, but as a static disk cache, or a ramdisk in other
words. Namely, they're aiming to cache the boot sequence into the
flashdisk to speed up boot times.



That would not make much sense IMO.


Why?

As to 4096 Byte sectors, I frankly do not see the point. Multi-sector
transfer stream more than 512 bytes on one go already. Clustering also
provides the possibility to use larger than 512Byte as allocatioon
unit.



Well, they explained it in article, they're saying that the reason this
is needed is because with only 512 bytes you don't have enough bits for
error correcting code with today's big hard disks.



That is nonsense. The size of the disk has no impact on the per-sector
error corection. Maybe they mean that with 4096 byte sectors they
can use more efficient codes.


Yeah, that's what they meant. ECC is taking up too much of the disk real
estate these days.


???? It's taking up the same percentage it always took up. Disks today are
approaching the size of large datacenters 20 years ago, so I find the
"taking up too much real estate" argument to be kind of silly.

Yousuf Khan


--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)
  #36  
Old December 19th 05, 07:38 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
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Default New hard disk architectures

Troll attempt to set followup to .chips undone.

"J. Clarke" wrote in message
Yousuf Khan wrote:
Arno Wagner wrote:
I don't think they're talking about using flash in the sense of a
dynamic disk cache, but as a static disk cache, or a ramdisk in other
words. Namely, they're aiming to cache the boot sequence into the
flashdisk to speed up boot times.


That would not make much sense IMO.


Why?

As to 4096 Byte sectors, I frankly do not see the point. Multi-sector
transfer stream more than 512 bytes on one go already. Clustering also
provides the possibility to use larger than 512Byte as allocatioon
unit.


Well, they explained it in article, they're saying that the reason this
is needed is because with only 512 bytes you don't have enough bits for
error correcting code with today's big hard disks.


That is nonsense. The size of the disk has no impact on the per-sector
error corection. Maybe they mean that with 4096 byte sectors they
can use more efficient codes.


Yeah, that's what they meant. ECC is taking up too much of the disk real
estate these days.


???? It's taking up the same percentage it always took up. Disks today are
approaching the size of large datacenters 20 years ago, so I find the
"taking up too much real estate" argument to be kind of silly.


The simpletons at T13 disagree with you:
"
4.21 Long Physical Sector Feature Set for Non-Packet Devices

The purpose of the long physical sector feature set is to allow increased
media format efficiency. During write operations devices calculate an er-
ror correction code, ECC, and write the ECC on the media following the data.
ECC encoding is more efficient when used over a larger amount of data.
"

And the idea is already 3 years old :
http://www.t13.org/docs2002/e01138r1.pdf


Yousuf Khan

  #37  
Old December 20th 05, 12:59 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
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Default New hard disk architectures

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Yousuf Khan wrote:
Arno Wagner wrote:
I don't think they're talking about using flash in the sense of a
dynamic disk cache, but as a static disk cache, or a ramdisk in other
words. Namely, they're aiming to cache the boot sequence into the
flashdisk to speed up boot times.



That would not make much sense IMO.


Why?


How would you determine where the boot-sequence ends? What if
it forks? How far would you get actually (personal guess:
not far)? And does it realyy give you significant speed imptovement?
With Linux, kernel loading is the fastest part of booting. The
part that takes long is device detection and initialisatiom.
My guess is it is the same with Windows, so almost no gain from
reading the boot data faster.

As to 4096 Byte sectors, I frankly do not see the point. Multi-sector
transfer stream more than 512 bytes on one go already. Clustering also
provides the possibility to use larger than 512Byte as allocatioon
unit.



Well, they explained it in article, they're saying that the reason this
is needed is because with only 512 bytes you don't have enough bits for
error correcting code with today's big hard disks.



That is nonsense. The size of the disk has no impact on the per-sector
error corection. Maybe they mean that with 4096 byte sectors they
can use more efficient codes.


Yeah, that's what they meant. ECC is taking up too much of the disk real
estate these days.


I think that is nonsense. ECC is something like 10%. It does not
make sense to rewrite every driver and the whole virtual layer just
to make this a bit smaller, except meybe from the POV of a
salesperson. From an enginnering POV there is good reason not
to change complex systems for a minor gain.

Arno
  #38  
Old December 20th 05, 01:47 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
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Default New hard disk architectures

YKhanwrote:
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


Yes, interesting you mention that. I have a theory, especially when
Microsoft supports the idea when they won't be making money from it.

Or will they?

Last I heard, the new Windows Vista is such a pig, it needs all this
to boot in the same time XP boots.

They tossed out the NTFS file system, then they didn't. There's more
to this then meets the eye.

What theories you do have?

  #39  
Old December 20th 05, 02:11 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
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Default New hard disk architectures

"Arno Wagner" wrote in message
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Yousuf Khan wrote:
Arno Wagner wrote:
I don't think they're talking about using flash in the sense of a
dynamic disk cache, but as a static disk cache, or a ramdisk in other
words. Namely, they're aiming to cache the boot sequence into the
flashdisk to speed up boot times.


That would not make much sense IMO.


Why?


How would you determine where the boot-sequence ends? What if
it forks? How far would you get actually (personal guess:
not far)? And does it realyy give you significant speed imptovement?
With Linux, kernel loading is the fastest part of booting. The
part that takes long is device detection and initialisatiom.
My guess is it is the same with Windows, so almost no gain from
reading the boot data faster.

As to 4096 Byte sectors, I frankly do not see the point. Multi-sector
transfer stream more than 512 bytes on one go already. Clustering also
provides the possibility to use larger than 512Byte as allocatioon
unit.


Well, they explained it in article, they're saying that the reason this
is needed is because with only 512 bytes you don't have enough bits for
error correcting code with today's big hard disks.


That is nonsense. The size of the disk has no impact on the per-sector
error corection. Maybe they mean that with 4096 byte sectors they
can use more efficient codes.


Yeah, that's what they meant. ECC is taking up too much of the disk real
estate these days.


I think that is nonsense.


You have always been an idiot too.

ECC is something like 10%.


Right, that's huge. High time to cut that back.

It does not make sense to rewrite every driver


You don't have the faintest idea what this is about, have you.

and the whole virtual layer just to make this a bit smaller,


except meybe from the POV of a salesperson.


Completely engulfed in conspiricy theories.

From an enginnering POV there is good reason not
to change complex systems for a minor gain.


This has been working in SCSI for years, stupid.
And it's already a reality in ATA/ATAPI-7.


Arno

  #40  
Old December 20th 05, 08:04 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
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Default New hard disk architectures

Arno Wagner wrote:
How would you determine where the boot-sequence ends? What if
it forks? How far would you get actually (personal guess:
not far)? And does it realyy give you significant speed imptovement?
With Linux, kernel loading is the fastest part of booting. The
part that takes long is device detection and initialisatiom.
My guess is it is the same with Windows, so almost no gain from
reading the boot data faster.


You would manually choose which components go into the flash disk. Or
you would get a program to analyse the boot sequence and it will choose
which components to send to the flash. You can even pre-determine what
devices are in the system and preload their device drivers.

I think that is nonsense. ECC is something like 10%. It does not
make sense to rewrite every driver and the whole virtual layer just
to make this a bit smaller, except meybe from the POV of a
salesperson. From an enginnering POV there is good reason not
to change complex systems for a minor gain.


You've just made the perfect case for why it's needed. 10% of a 100GB
drive is 10GB, 10% of 200GB is 20GB, and so on.

Yousuf Khan
 




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