These guys modify a 1.5tb seagate to get huge performance gains. Well apparently.

http://www.techwarelabs.com/seagate_1-5tb-mod/

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"Apparently"

How this is done : Get a 1,5TB drive , cut capacity to 300 GB and they say you have more or less the performance of a VelociRaptor saving some money.

The problem is that VelociRaptor is optimized for speed, I would like to see a benchmark on such modded drive on fragmented files, large files, video files, continuous throughput...

Technically the idea is simple : cut capacity so only some part of the drive is used, so there's little or no need for switching between heads - as this kind of drive have a large quantity of data stored per surface - add a larger cache (by default on this drive) and voila, APPARENTLY you get performance.

To me, there's no alternative to specially designed drives for special applications, but the approach is interesting.

Short stroking to utilize only the outer tracks, which are more dense.

Heads don't have to shift tracks as often, etc.


Benchmarks are taken on the drives total performance across the entire drive, which will get lower and lower on the inner tracks.


Short stroking ensures only the "high performance" tracks are used.

Can that software be used to cut other drives? I've used seatools before but never noticed that feature.

You can use HDAT2 to create a HPA. It works with any drive.

http://www.hdat2.com
http://www.hdat2.com/files/hdat2en_v11.pdf
http://www.hdat2.com/files/cookbook_v11.pdf
http://www.hdat2.com/hdat2_faq.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_protected_area

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Here is a thread which suggests that its OP's WD5001AALS-00E3A0 Caviar Black 500GB drive actually consists of two 500GB platters that have been shortstroked:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys ... 7258dab31b

The following, more recent thread suggests that its OP's WD10EARS may in fact be a shortstroked WD20EARS:

http://community.wdc.com/t5/Desktop/WD1 ... d-p/206562

ISTM that when you buy two WD drives of the same model, you can't be certain that they will have similar performance. Perhaps you also need to compare the head and platter related characters in the DCM ???

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A backup a day keeps DR away.