Advances in disk technology: performance issues

Although the computer industry has made regular, significant advances in magnetic recording technology for hard disk drives, some advances-such as those in head design, media, and channel technology-are primarily concerned with increasing disk density and do not necessarily improve total performance. The author asks how, for example, does disk density affect data transfer rate? How do multiple platters affect head seek time? And how does partitioning large capacity drives affect performance for each partition? The answers to these questions-and others like them-largely depend on particular configurations and user workload.