Perpendicular vs. Non-Perp

[master811]

Basically i saw that OC are offering a discount on the 7200.10 500GB drives and am very tempted to get one to replace 2x 250GB Maxtors I have as I need the space anyway.

But my question is, does anyone know if there are any real advantages with going with perp over non-perp drives (i.e. the 7200.9 for instance). Are they faster/more reliable at all, does the extra cost with perp justify it?

Cheers

 

[semi-pro waster]

Perpendicular drives are faster, partly due to the technology involved in that but also because of the advances in drive technology generally. As for reliability that is more debatable but many people will tell you that Maxtors aren't reliable anyway, I'm still not 100% convinced on that issue as sometimes they appear to make good drives but Seagate do make solid drives overall.

 

[stoofa]

Perpendicular storage devices are newer than non-perpendicular.
So, because they happen to contain "newer technology" they are faster.
However it is not actually the perpendicular storage of the data alone which is making the drives quicker.
It's a bit like taking a normal car, putting a new version of the engine in that provides a little more horsepower and also adding so go-faster stripes down the side at the same time.
Then, claiming the go-faster stripes are making all the difference.

Perpendicular storage was an ends to a means.
It was becomming physically impossible to produce drives larger than 750GB using the old storage method.
So the perpendicular storage method was designed and now we have a lot more scope for increasing capacity (see Hitachi's 1TB model as an example).
Perpendicular storage means that less platters are required - so there is an immediate increase in performance.
The perpendicular storage devices are newer, so they have the added advantages of newer firmware, logic boards etc which also increase the overall performance of the drive.
It isn't so much perpendicular storage which gives you the performance increase in a perp Vs non-perp drive.

 

[james.miller]

stoofa thats wrong. perp tech was directly responsible for the jump in speed. its all down to how much you can fit on a platter. perp. tech is now at 200gb/platter. Denser data means faster reading of that data at any given spindle speed, nothing much else has changed on the drives.

Perpendicular storage means that less platters are required - so there is an immediate increase in performance.

thats wrong also. think of platters as an 'internal' raid. more platters require more heads, but also churn out more data per second. put it this way, the fastest 7200rpm drive in existance is that 1tb hitachi, and that has 5x 200gb platters. i expect that when they make the jump to 233gb/platter, things will speed up again - we should be seeing the first 7200rpm drives producing > 100mb/sec