Seagate's Multi Actuator technology will double the hard drives

In the repository field, SSDs are already interested in SSD. And one would hardly have expected something new in the hard disks beyond the gradual increase in capacity. However, the appearance is deceiving, perhaps in the future, perhaps going to thinner glass plates. So, WD recently announced a new way of recording MAMR. And revealing surprising news now before the end of the year comes also from Seagate. This company is going to make a major change in the performance of hard drives. That could significantly increase their performance.

Actuator, Seagate’s Multi Actuator technology will double the hard drives,

Seagate’s Multi-Actuator technology will double the hard drives

The new upgrade is called Multi-Actuator, and if you have any idea of how magnetic rotating discs work. Also, you may already know what’s going to happen from the header image. This technology aims to raise sequential read and write speeds. So, that is a growing brake on high-capacity drives. There is a situation where there is plenty of space on the disk. But access to these data takes a long time. If you want to read or transfer the entire content to another, you need many hours and maybe even days.

Today, hard disks have one to five recording boards (enterprise HDDs up to nine ). Each plate has two headers for both sides. And it probably is not possible at the same time with ten headers. They are set on the same arm, which moves the only servomotor/actuator (nowadays an electromagnet is used. That moves with high accuracy with the shoulder depending on how much current the electronics let go of). The result is that only one record is written or read since only one header is active at one time.

Seagate Barracuda Hard Drive Inside (Source: Wikimedia Commons, by Hubert Berberich)

Multi-Actuator technology is changing this. Seagate underneath this sticker into multi-plate discs will begin to mount a drive that has heads split between the two shoulder bundles. And these bundles will be able to move autonomously. Instead of one boom-like servomotor. Also, two are in the same space above each other, so the disk has two separate display mechanisms. This will slightly increase the price of the HDD and its consumption. But the result is that the disk can at least theoretically offer higher performance.

Multi Actuator System

Both headers can read and write at a time. However, it is not yet clear whether discs will actually offer such interlaced “RAID” mode that is transparent to the operating system. The company says that the host computer “can” manage the disk as two separate repositories so that a possible load breakdown would be entirely under his control. Whether this control mode is the only one possible is not clear.

The disk will be reported as the only device in this “guest-managed” mode. However, it will give him the ability to perform two readings or writes at the same time, which will probably also require splitting the total capacity into two zones corresponding to the two sets of plates with a separate exposure mechanism. Even this arrangement would offer twice the power, but this time created by aggregating the two parts together. If a system (such as a server) has written or read requests for both halves of the disk, they will double in this mode to twice the IOPS value. This concept essentially represents the integration of two hard drives together, but the advantage is that they are in one single case, which should probably still have standard 3.5 “dimensions. This is crucial in servers because their chassis has the final number of positions for the HDD.

Actuator, Seagate’s Multi Actuator technology will double the hard drives, Seagate has just announced the development of this technology, not what kind of drives it is based on. According to customers’ requirements, they might have SATA, SAS, but possibly NVMe (with U.2 connector ). Also, with which Seagate reaches eight discs in one disc. But when exactly such an HDD comes to market. Also, we do not know yet, Seagate will tell you when the products will be ready.

Looking ahead, quadruple performance?

However, the company mentions the possibility of improving this technology by using four independent display mechanisms and shoulder/head bundles. Then the theoretical power of the HDD could be even four times. Since the sequential transmission speeds of the best magnetic discs today are around 250 MB / s, it would already have been over 1 GB / s, which could be quite interesting for a lot of applications.