harddrives/storage: why no advancement?

[RoseDragon83L]

Over the years since I've been into computers I've seen great increases in speeds...
-processors go from 300mhz up to 3200mhz, a 2000mhz processor outperform a 3200mhz processor, not to mention the advancement to a 64bit processor.
-memory gone from 32mb 66mhz memory to 1024mb 533mhz ddr memory that has double the bandwidth of regular sdram (not the mention RAMBUS).
-CDburners gone from $600 2x burners to $45 54x burners and $240 8x dvd burners.
-3d cards go from pci 8mb rivaTNT's to 8xagp 256mb ddr cards that... that I can't even imagine trying to explain the leaps they've made. The difference in a TNT to a GeforceFX is just... HUGE. Not to mention Radeon's here.

I can go on with other things but what I'm missing here is what... hardrives!
I mean sure. In this time period I layed out here (I can't remember the year a got a computer... 1998?) they've gone from 8gig harddrives to like 250gig harddrives but what else? they still are mostly 5400 or 7200rpm drives. Their seek times are STILL from 8-12ms on average. The STILL use ata100, only Maxtor seems to use ata133, but even at that it's not that big of an improvement.
So what's the holdup here? Why hasn't there been an improvement in this area? The only improvement is size, which is basically from a cost perspective, aside from that the ata133 which is only used by one company.
Am I missing something here?... why has there not been any improvement in speed in this area?

[Lord Riff Raff]

Actually the new ones use SATA, and it's because they aren't governed by Moores law.
(Semiconductor speed doubles every 18 months)
Like moniters they take a long time to change. However I have seen failure rates go from once every 3 months to once every 6 years. Sizes go from 100mb to 120gb SATA and people being able to afford 2 sometimes 3. Also RAID.

[jerome187]

your best bet for increased hard drive preformance is raid (do a google search for a explaination) or pay big bucks for Ultra SCSI 320 (320 MB/s)

[Zuljin]

Well size wise the harddrives have gone up quite a bit, but the other...
ATA100 is the standard still, but ATA133 is beoming more and more used, too bad mostly Maxtor makes use of it :\
but then you have the SATA which is quite a bit faster

But who knows.....in a few years we might see some changes, atleast if the development of nanotechnology goes as well as I hope

[grantu2]

Having a sata drive is like haveing a scsi hd basically. (mega fast speeds)

I really don't thing there should be any real focus on the need to improve hd speeds, the only thing that should be improved are the heat ratios that these new hd's put out.

Listen, what would it matter if you had a hd that spun at 100,000 rpms on a 300gb with a seek time of .0001 seconds? you'll only have faster load times not actual programming times. meaning you won't see faster app/game performance because the memory that is needed to run apps/games are dumped to ram (that�s why ram gets improved so much faster compared to hd), If we didn't have Ram then I could see a need for better hds, because the hd would need to be on a constant spin to keep track of tempory memory, systems memory, etc�. The only people that actually need performance hds (Scsi/sata) would be servers who's hd data constantly changes.

[RoseDragon83L]

I was falling asleep when I wrote that and completely forgot SCSI and SATA.
SCSI is really nice. It can make a system so much faster from what I've seen, but mainly cause of the drives not the interface itself. There's almost no hd's that have under an 8ms seek time on EIDE, there's a few on SATA but not many really. Mostly cause of the rpm's of the hd's.
SATA has potential only if hd's actually start doing data transfers that can use that potential. Up till now they still don't really even make use of ata133 or SCSI.

Needing a fast hd isn't really the subject here. We can put up with slow load times just as we all could have put up with using sub 500mhz cpu's. The thing is, why should we have to? True while actually playing a game or running an app you won't see too much difference aside from memory swapping, and pagefile use if you don't have much ram, but that's not the area a hd would help with as stated, it's load times. Ever upgrade from a 5400rpm hd to a 7200rpm one?...remember that difference? It's a nice feeling having windows load things quicker. Ever play a game like Everquest with "zones"? Or how about opening a folder with 5000 files, then trying to scroll down, or in something like winamp with 5000 songs and you scroll? Moving 100's of megs from one drive to another or other media? Or even just loading a big game, we'll see the lag in things like this more soon as games are getting larger and larger. FFXI is going to require... what like 6gigs hd space! I know most of these are just little nuisances and I can put up with a little bogging down in windows explorer or waiting and waiting for a game to initially load into ram and then swap but why should we have to?

I'm not really trying to make this a rant or anything. I can deal with these nuisances.
I guess what I'm asking is why no real improvement? Is it cause they just aren't putting as much effort into development into new mediums and speed? Is it cause making faster drives and having movable parts that are going at that speed too unreliable? Would it be too expensive to put more development and resources into superior SCSI drives (I should say hd's with faster rpm's, most of those are SCSI anyways) to make them more inexpensive to consumers? Do they not know of any other medium that can store and hold large amounts of data reliably that has more potential than discs?


dang... I need to make shorter posts in the future huh

[Lord Riff Raff]

SCSI and IDE HDDs are identical except for the interface, just switching to SCSI won't make your computer faster.

[RoseDragon83L]

Yeah, I should clarify. Just that most hd's that are EIDI are at most 7200rpm whereas SCSI's are almost all 10000 at least. I don't see the reason they don't have many, if any at all, 10000rpm hd's for EIDI. SATA has a few now but not many really.

[jerome187]

Originally posted by Lord Riff Raff
SCSI and IDE HDDs are identical except for the interface, just switching to SCSI won't make your computer faster.

Hmmmm really? Then why is my system sooooooooooo much faster after upgrading to a raid of 3 10,000 RPM, 8MB cache, 7.2 MS seek Ultra 160 SCSI drives from one ATA100 drive.

BTW, if your in the market for high preformance HDs ultra 160 drives are pretty cheap, I got a ultra 160 SCSI controller and those 3 10GB drives for 120$. I know its not much for storage, but everything is much faster now.

[Lord Riff Raff]

Yes but if you had gone to:
3 RAID SATA 10,000 RPM, 8MB cache HDDs you would get an even higher speed. Specially if you configured the RAID for speed over redundency.

[jerome187]

maybe. but that would cost well over 400$, and the extra 360$+ isnt worth the little speed gain, if any, over the SCSI drives.

also I herd you cant boot linux off SATA drives yet, altho this was a while ago, that problem has probbly been solved by now.

[Kid Buu]

One factor also has been the large increase in how much data can be fit onto one disk. Not to mention the fact that there is no flawed code for the hard drive to put up with. Our pc's could be much much faster than they are right now, its just flawed code that slows us down and increases the need for more power.

[Georgyw5k]

im getting a new HD for christmas , probably. ATM , in comet , its �60 for a 80gb western digital 7200 rpm Hard Drive. Cheap.

[Isostealer]

Originally posted by Georgyw5k
im getting a new HD for christmas , probably. ATM , in comet , its �60 for a 80gb western digital 7200 rpm Hard Drive. Cheap.

Weird...Over here, it's $80 for a 60 GB Harddrive.

On topic, Hardrives aren't something that really need improving. It's just space and speed. It's not like a graphic card.