Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Since the delivery of the first hard drives via a courier, fundamentals in mechanical drive technology have not changed forklift . . The modern day hard drives offer a world of innovation and refinement that is light years ahead compared to early ones, in particular with regard to miniaturization.
SMR drives and CMR (conventional magnet recording) are two ways to pack those tiny bits of data in an HDD enclosure. Understanding how each method works will help you choose the drive that suits your requirements best.
The mechanical hard disk drive is a storage device that uses spinning platters coated with magnetic material. To access the and modify the data on these hard drives, read heads and writes are tiny electromechanical arms that hang above the platters.
The read/write head magnetically attaches small regions to the platters when data is being written to an mechanical hard drive. These magnetized areas can still be used later to retrieve data, even if the hard drives is not powered on. The platters spin when the hard drive turns on. Once the platters are spinning, the write/read head will move to the right place on the platters in order to retrieve the data.
There are two kinds of mechanical hard drives available: CMR hard disk drives and SMR.
CMR technology makes use of separate tracks to save data on the magnetic platter. Every track on the platter is concentric and can be reached independently by the drive’s write/read head. As the head can jump quickly between tracks in order to retrieve different data, this allows for high read and write speeds.
SMR hard drives are magnetic platters that overlap with the tracks to enable high-capacity storage. The overlap, also known as “shingling”, is a technique that mimics the way roof tiles are laid.
In order to write data to an SMR storage media drive, the head first needs to erase all data on the track that overlaps. Writing to an SMR storage media drive can take longer than writing to CMR. Additionally, to be able to retrieve data, the head must travel sequentially along the tracks.
Both hard drives have their advantages and disadvantages. Let’s first look at the advantages and disadvantages of CMR drives:
CMR drives come with the following drawbacks: