Hard Drive Balancing

[Doug Nelson]

One of the most often forgotten disk maintenance tasks is the Hard Drive Balancing

[Gary Richardson]

[chrishoggy]

I just put lead on the light side of my drives, saves moving data

[philbach]

Well I can tell when my hard drive wobbles. So I remove it from my computer and run the drive through my wringer washer out here on the island. The wringer squishes the bits across the drive balancing it nicely. I would recommend that this be done once a week.

[mistermonday]

I can't wait until Photoshop CS3 comes out!! It has a built in HD Balancer option in the Save and Save As dialog boxes. When checked, PS will convert the image file from 8 bit mode to 32 bit mode and in bits 25-32 it adds 1's or o's to balance those exactly with the number of 1's and 0's in the first 8 bits so that the weight of the image is perfectly balanced. Now when run on 2 Dual Core Pentiums in 4 GB of RAM, PS can effectively eliminate 100% of potential wobble (which could defocus the image) when its scratch drive and main storage drive is an SATA 12,400 RPM 800 Gigabyte SpinDoctor Drive shortly to be released by Maxtor. It is rumored that the digital camera makers will very shortly follow suit. With these advances in technology, retouching will never be easier.
Regards, Murray

[Kraellin]

well, because a harddrive is magnetic media, the ones are negatively charged and the zeros are positively charged, so i just take the drive out of the bay periodically and give it a good sharp rap with a hammer. and, like any good magnetic substance this rearranges and evens out the charges nicely.

craig

[1STLITE]

Man this is - uh - ok. So I first open this post, read the first post, click the link. I am reading... and reading - Ok, this can't be for real, I tell myself - then I read the rest of the posts...

This is seriously a joke right?

[Frank Lopes]

Originally Posted by 1STLITE

joke right?

Absolutely not!

The notion of balance in data goes back hundreds of years to the old masters. They were always looking for balance in their paintings. That is where the rule of thirds in paintings came from.

It is that now, for the first time you actually have software and hardware following their lead and doing something about. The new SCSI drives that were announced on 4/1/2006 have a built in utility that make sure all the bits are neatly organized so that you don't have all the data on the same size of the platter. It evenly organizes the pixels so they are evenly distributed.

Very cool technology.

[Doug Nelson]

Hitachi has announced a new vertical "1" technology that makes the 1's and 0's the precise same weight. If this goes into production, it will make hd balancing obsolete.

[byRo]

Yes, I heard of that. I did get rather worried about the consequences.

As you pack more bits onto the drive you have to consider the problems inherent to the increase in angular momentum. So the disk is fast becoming a gyroscope - and every one has seen a gyroscope doing gravity-defying stunts.

Worse still, there is an intense magnetic field due to the vertical packing of the bits. In theory a rapidly rotating magnetic field can shield gravity and, some say, even generate anti-gravity.

I'm sure the folks at Hitachi have worked this out, but if speeds keep getting faster and bit-packing denser - soon we'll have to strap the computer down, otherwise it will start levitating.

Rô

[gland]

What happens if you compress files to save disk space??
Talk about a balance problem......

[philbach]

Originally Posted by 1STLITE

Man this is - uh - ok. So I first open this post, read the first post, click the link. I am reading... and reading - Ok, this can't be for real, I tell myself - then I read the rest of the posts...

This is seriously a joke right?

This is a serene and serious thread your treading on. No joking here. By the way do I have a financial investment for you! Its almost too good to believe.

[Gary Richardson]

Actually its really easy to get data balance, you just need the MkXX dynamic 1 stretcher.

This handy device known to very few, stretches the 1s in your data till they are the same length as the circumference of your Os, thus achieving complete data balance without the necessity of moving them on your disc.

[Peter S]

This explains why my computer seems to move across the room every now and then.
Its the badly loaded spin dryer effect.

[Doug Nelson]

You'd think when they designed the first hard drive they would have used 6 and 9 instead of 1 and 0, to avoid this very problem.

[HroadhogD1]

The reason it gets out of balance is all of the fagmented files on your hard drive. As you defragment, all you have to do is Stop when there is a perfect balance.

[1STLITE]

Seriously - ya'll are killing me - I canNOT stop laughing.

(BTW - sorry about momentarily letting the blonde come out in me. Rest assured she is now securely restrained!)

Dawn

Oh and Phil - Do tell me more!! I heard there was this guy from around the corner who was similarly approached - turns out he now owns some bridge somewhere!!

[Bryan L]

At my computer shop we run into this problem all the time. We find the most difficult situation is when running a RAID array. Trying to balance two harddrives at the same time can be pretty tricky.

We found the best method is to unscrew both drives, leave them plugged in and put them on a scale. While running the "harddrive balance" software we wait until they are balanced on the scale and remove them. A little tricky, but works like a charm.

-Bryan

[mistermonday]

Doug, they tried 6 and 9 but encountered a problem. As the platter spun, the rotational motion caused the 6 and 9 to alternately invert once with every 180 degree rotation of the platter. In order to avoid a read error, it was necessary to polarize the read head sensor on the arm with alternate 180 degree phase inversions. The quantization error which results from the asynchronous phase distortion effectively induced the Hard Drive equivalent of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle where the Hard Disk controller could reliably distinguish between 6 and 9 but it could never be certain exactly where the the actual drive's read head was above the platter. Drive Balance was a much easier problem to deal with. Mechanics were designed so that the average MTBF time occurred within 12 months of the expiration of the warranty period.
Regards, Murray

[Kraellin]

murray,

i think they used that system on the last copy-protection scheme on software i bought. effectively, it creates an infinite soft bit loop.

craig

[Gina_D]

Yet another time I can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that on my mac, defragging and hard drive balancing (g4, second generation and up) with OS 10.4, have been addressed and not something I need to be concerned with. Best of luck to the rest of you with this though!

Gina