Karbosguide.com - Module 4b3.
Hard disks - areas of developments
The contents:
Everyone wants faster, cheaper disks with increased capacity.
Therefore, hard disk technology undergoes an explosive development. There
are several major trends in this development:
Data are packed increasingly closer with new coating and read/write techniques.
The disks rotate faster and faster.
The cache is increased and made more efficient.
The interface is updated. The electronic that transports data from the
drive to the motherboard has to keep up with the rest of the drive.
It is my impression that the various hard disk manufacturers alternately
develop new, sophisticated technologies, which spread with the speed of
lightning to other brands:
In 1995 IBM suddenly introduced lightning fast disks with new MR heads
(Magneto-Resistive). Before this, the head technology was called thin
film heads. Today almost all vendors use MR heads.
In 1997 Quantum introduced the Ultra DMA interface, which all other manufacturers
now use as well.
In 1998 IBM introduced the GMR heads (Giant Magneto Resistive), which allowed
new high density drives.
In 1999 we got the new improved Ultra DMA-66 interface, which has the capacity
of speeding up the EIDE drives to even better transfer rates. Since 2000 the interface ATA/100 has given even better performance.
IBM, Maxtor and Western Digital are the leading manufactures of EIDE harddisks.
In 1998 around 150 million harddisks were sold worldwide. They were produced
by:
| Vendor |
Market share |
| Quantum |
21.7% |
| Seagate |
20.7% |
| Western Digital |
16.9% |
| Maxtor |
15.5% |
| IBM |
3.9% |
| Fujitsu |
? |
Next page
Previous page
Also see Module 4c about
optical media (CDROM and DVD).
Also read about EIDE and UDMA
And about the most advanced and elegant controller principle of all:
SCSI.
Read module 7a about monitors, and 7b
on graphics card.
Read module 7c about sound cards, and 7d
on digital sound and music.
HD
Tach - a fine program to test harddisks.
Copyright (c) 1996-2005 by Michael B. Karbo. www.Karbosguide.com.