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What is Hard Disk Spindle Speed

Today we will discussing about hard disk spindle speed. As hard Drive or HDD become more advanced and virtually every component in them is required to do more and work harder and the hard drive spindle motor is no exception as discussed in detail here how to increasing the speed at which the platters spin improves both positioning and transfer performance in hard disk. The data can be read off the disk faster during sequential operations & rotational latency. The time that the heads must wait for the correct sector number to come under the head is also reduced, improving random operations. For this reason there has been a push to increase the speed of the spindle motor, and more than at any other time in the past, hard disk spin speeds are changing rapidly.
At one time all PC hard disks spun at 3600 rpm in fact for the first 10 years of the pc’s existence, that was all there was. One reason for this is that their designs were based on the old designs of large, per PC hard disks that used AC motors, and standard North American AC power is 60 Hz per second 3600 RPM in the early manufactures began to realize how much performance could be improved by increasing spindle speeds. The next step up for 3600 rpm was 4500 rpm; 5400 rpm soon followed and became a standard for many years. From there speeds have steadily marched upwards. Usually faster PC hard disk speeds “debut” on SCSI drives that are used in higher-performance applications, and then filter down to IDE/ ATA a few years later. At one time 7200 rpm spindle were only found on top of the line SCSI drivers they are now being used in consumer IDE/ ATA disks sold at retail while SCSI has moved on to loftier heights. This table shows the most common PC spindle speeds, their associated average rotational latency and their typical applications as of early 2000.

Increasing spindle motor speed creator many design challenges, particularly aimed at keeping vibration and heat under control. As discussed here, when the motor spins faster these become more of an issue. Some high end drives have very serious heat vibration and noise problems that required special mounting and cooling work to allow then to run without problems. To some sextant there is a trade off between spindle speed and the heat and noise issue. Engineers generally focus on keeping these matters under control and usually improve then significantly after the first generation of drivers at any given spindle speed. However in some applications, using a slower and quieter drives can make sense. 

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