Despite the falling prices of flash-based solid-state drives and their rising presence in desktops and laptops, hard drives aren’t completely out of the picture. They offer extremely large capacities at an affordable price, but their read and write speeds fall extremely short. Seagate plans to address this issue with multi-actuator technology.
On their simplest level, hard drives are similar to old-school record players, only they can write to the medium as well. Hard drives contain several magnetic, spinning “records” that hold your data, and are accessed by arms with needle-style readers on their ends. These arms typically move across the platters simultaneously, but Seagate’s multi-actuator technology now divides them all into two separate groups.
“With two actuators operating on a single pivot point, each actuator will control half of the drive’s arms. Half the drive’s recording heads will operate together as a unit, while the other half will operate independently as a separate unit,” Seagate said. “This enables a hard drive to double its performance while maintaining the same capacity as that of a single actuator drive.”
In an illustration, Seagate shows eight spinning platters complemented by eight arms, each with their own read and write heads (needles). All eight share the same pivot point, but the top four are moving separately than the bottom four. Data is read and written at a faster rate because Seagate’s new design doesn’t perform these operations in a single wave, but rather in two using a leapfrog-type fashion.
Seagate’s multi-actuator technology focuses on the hyperscale data center where hard drives are still the major source of storage due to their low cost and extremely high capacities. But they’re not exactly fast when compared to solid-state drives using the same storage device connector. How this new technology will improve access times versus using the standard data center-focused hard drive still remains to be seen.
Unfortunately, the old-school SATA 3 connector used by bulky hard drives and 2.5-inch solid-state drives will always bottleneck performance. You can check our SATA guide if you’re interested in further information. It’s capable of moving data at up to 600MB per second, which you will never experience although 2.5-inch solid state drives can come close. Hard drives with platters that spin up to 7,200 rotations per minute (RPM) can reach up to 160MB per second, and those that spin at 5,400RPM are even slower.
In theory, Seagate’s new technology should double the maximum data movement speed of hard drives. But the new design likely isn’t just locked to splitting the arms into two separate groups: The company likely needed a new controller that can split data into two groups of platters while keeping all that data “together.” In other words, instead of saving your photo to the hard drive in one long stroke, its painted onto the platters in two small, faster strokes.
Seagate also said it developed a new heat-assisted magnetic recording technology (HAMR) to pack even more storage. This tech will appear in its Exos hard drives in pilot volumes during 2018 followed by a full release in 2019.
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.