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]

Bit redistribution

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

[Craig Walters]

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]

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]

1stlite this is dead serious

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.