Michelle Campanale
Last fall Seagate released its 7200-rpm, 9.1-GB Medalist Pro 9140, which features a fluid dynamic bearing motor. In December, the company unveiled a high-performance drive with this type of motor, 12 platters, and 45-GB capacity. Expect to see this technology in 2-1/2-inch drives soon, Seagate says.
Seagate admits the technology is not new; it has been used in gyroscopes and high-accuracy machine tools for 50 years or more. However, when applied to disks, it brings a new level of mechanical damping into the drives, helps make the drives more stable, and improves their ability to read and write tracks. In a nutshell, using fluid dynamic bearing motors results in drives that are quieter, use less power, and perform better than existing drives with ball-bearing motors.
Other advantages include relative high damping, compared to ball bearings, which allows the disk to read and write at very high speeds with virtually no vibration over the tracks. This kind of drive can also read and write very accurately on a higher number of tracks per inch. Additionally, noise is lowered by fluid dynamic bearing motor technology. Without ball bearings there's no metal-to-metal contact.
Serious advances with these motors will continue within the next 9 to 24 months, according to Gunter Heine, vice president of Seagate's Motor Group. This is because Seagate (along with its three strategic supply and manufacturing partners) has a relative lock on how the drive components are made. Though fluid dynamic bearing motors offer significant advances in shock and acoustics, vibration, and fati
gue life (number of hours before metal fatigue sets in and causes bearings to fail), Seagate has managed to keep the cost down to around the same as ball-bearing motors. It's just a matter of time before competing companies catch up.
illustration_link (11 Kbytes)
In hard drives that use fluid dynamic bearing motors (like some Seagate models), the piece parts inside the motor form air gaps that are filled with viscous oil; this oil can withstand temperature changes far greater than what traditional ball-bearing drives can withstand.
photo_link (53 Kbytes)
In hard drives that use fluid dynamic bearing motors (like some Seagate models), the piece parts inside the motor form air gaps that are filled with viscous oil; this oil can withstand temperature changes far greater than what traditional ball-bearing drives can withstand.
Bearing the Load
