Originally Posted By: MountainSide

Somewhere I heard, rightly or wrongly, that drives over 1Tb have multiple platters and this can cause slower seek times, generate higher heat loads, and a higher failure rate due to the mechanics. Any truth to that?

Actually, multiple platters should contribute to faster access times...

There is a technique called "elevator seeking" which works on multiple platter drives that allows the controller (built in on IDE/ATA drives) to position data such that during read and write processes the next segment of a file should be under the head of a platter when it is required during long reads and writes.

Novell used it extensively when EVERY drive was multi platter just to get some semblance of capacity. It was this teqhnique, along with a couple of others, that made them the fastest file servers available for at least 2 decades.

As for reliability, check the MTBF figures between similar drives (single platter vs multiplatter) - I would be surprised if there is any significant difference. It may even be that the multi platter is MORE reliable (more spare sectors to redirect to).

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