amazing!

[Jon Fuller]

http://www.wimp.com/disk/

[verytricky]

Wheeeeeee.

That is what happens when your hard drive gets fragmented.

The difference between seek times is 1000 times. ie to locate data on the next sector vs a mechanical move of the arm takes 1000 times longer. It is a big factor when you are talking huge databases....

( thats why an array of 25 4 gig hard drives is faster than 5 20 gig hard drives. - Try explain that to a client who wants a penile extension by saying how large his servers hard drives are... One company had a single 120 gig mirror set! )

[waybomb]

I know a bit about pcs, but need some help here.
I've heard my drive in an older pc doing this wild searching. What a noise it can make!

So, my current pc, 3.4 ghz, has a 120gb sata drive in it. Now, I am certainly not a database server, but will I get speed by putting 6 20's in instead? What controls file placement across those 6 drives?

I also have a 20gb Scsi ultra fast/wide drive with an adaptec controller, which is capable of RAID. Is RAID what spreads the files across multiple drives? Or is RAID simply a scheme to preserve data multiple times across multiple drives?

Just curious - this pc rocks as it is.

EDIT - the SCSI drive is from my most recent dead PC. It has NT on it. Can I install it in my current pc (running XP Pro) along with the Adaptec controller, without causing conflicts? When I first plug it in, will my pc go nuts seeing two C drives with different operating systems on them, or will I get a BIOS prompt to change something? I know I should probably bring it to a pro, but heck, I've built a few pcs with practically no knowledge of these things and they were all screamers for their time.
Any guidance would be appreciated!

[verytricky]

Striping is what gives an increase in speed. This is basically spreading the data accross seperate drives. This will halve the number of physical moves for each doubling of drive space.

Adding the controller will enale XP to detect it and will treat it as the next avalable device. there shlould be no issues with two 'C' drives. There may be issues with XP not recognising the card.

What you gotto decide is how to stripe. 2 disk stripe has no data security, unless you mirror - which is pointless for speed. Raid 0 is the striping of data accross all avalable drives with no redundant data for correction. Fast as hell, but if you loose one disk, all the data is lost.

[MrRob]

I have got RAID 0 on x2 80gb SATA drives and gives me 160gb of which I have used 5gb, the hardest part is trying to fill it!
Striped is fast and gives you the space of both drives but as VT says there is no security. When I 1st set it up last year I had one of the HDD's go on the blink which ment I lost all my data stored between the 2 disks which was a pain in the arse!

[verytricky]

Work we did for Dixons group was raid 10 or raid 1+0 depending on what school you went to.

It had twin disk arrays, mirrored, with each array having 128 x 4 gig HDD stripe set only, no parity. Initially the heads did not move at all! It took around 40 gig of database load before we noticed any delay on the disks due to mechanical lag.

Awesome beast.

They replaced it with a terraserver setup

[verytricky]

Originally posted by MrRob
... gives me 160gb of which I have used 5gb, the hardest part is trying to fill it!

I fill a 4.7 gig DVD backup weekly with incremental backup, and I have 1.2 Terrabytes of disk at home

[MrRob]

Originally posted by verytricky
I fill a 4.7 gig DVD backup weekly with incremental backup, and I have 1.2 Terrabytes of disk at home

Your going way over my head now VT! : Home computings about my limit.
How many gb's in a terrabyte or tb as they may call it? I am guessing it would be a 1000gb??

[verytricky]

1024, but essentially yes, 1000gb

BTW - I start *work* on the 3rd!!!!


I have not done that for over 3 years....

[jw.]

Anyone know how the arm motor functions? There was reference to a voice coil at the beginning of the vid.

Good wee vid JF, btw.