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Date:      Mon, 8 Sep 1997 01:32:27 -0400
From:      Lee Cremeans <lee@wakky.dyn.ml.org>
To:        Simon Shapiro <Shimon@i-Connect.Net>
Cc:        chat@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: lousy disk perf. under cpu load (was IDE vs SCSI)
Message-ID:  <19970908013227.32344@wakky.dyn.ml.org>
In-Reply-To: <XFMail.970907214856.Shimon@i-Connect.Net>; from Simon Shapiro on Sun, Sep 07, 1997 at 09:48:56PM -0700
References:  <19970907171110.27847@lemis.com> <XFMail.970907214856.Shimon@i-Connect.Net>

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On Sun, Sep 07, 1997 at 09:48:56PM -0700, Simon Shapiro wrote:
> 
> Hi Greg Lehey;  On 07-Sep-97 you wrote: 
> 
> ....
> 
> >  Well, I can't remember the performance of the mid-70s, but my
> >  recollection of the performance in the early 80s on, say, a 3330 clone
> >  was that these drives had 30 sectors (2 spares) per track, and they
> >  ran at 3600 rpm.  Since they weren't buffered, that gives a maximum
> >  data transfer to the channel of about 860 kB/s.  Average positioning
> >  was round the 30 to 35 ms mark.
> 
> Check out Priam 14" 60MB drives, check Floppy drives from the early 80's.
> They were all much faster than that.  I clearly remember my Heathkit H8
> seeking at 5-7ms on a 5.25" floppy.

Well, Greg mentioned *average* seek...what the floppy-drive manuals list is
track-to-track seek. The only drives I remember having anything close to a
30 ms track-to-track were the old stepper-motor PC hard drives of the early
80s, and they were usually 15-20 ms. (They also had 65-85 ms average seek
times...yuck.) Also, most floppies still have a track-to-track seek of 5-7
ms...they havent changed much in design since the 80s. For reference, most
modern drives have average seek times of around 10ms, and track-to-track
seek times of 800us-2ms.

PS: When did the first voice-coil-seek hard drives come out? This is a
question that's been bugging me for some time now...

-- 
Lee C. -- Manassas, VA, USA  (WakkyMouse on DALnet #watertower)  
A! JW223 YWD++^i WK+++r P&B++ SL++^i GDF B&M KK--i MD+++i P++ I++++ Did 
$++ E5/10/70/3c/73ac Ee34/1/36 H2 PonPippi Ay77 M | hcremean (at) vt.edu
FreeBSD/Linux/Unix hacker...Win95 and M$ evil! (go see www.freebsd.org)
My home page: http://wakky.dyn.ml.org/~lee | finger me for geek code



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