The series Advances in Industrial Control aims to report and encourage
technology transfer in control engineering. The rapid development of
control technology has an impact on all areas of the control discipline.
New theory, new controllers, actuators, sensors, new industrial
processes, computer methods, new applications, new philosophies, new
challenges. Much of this development work resides in industrial reports,
feasibility study papers and the reports of advanced collaborative
projects. The series offers an opportunity for researchers to present an
extended exposition of such new work in all aspects of industrial
control for wider and rapid dissemination. Hard disk drive systems are
ubiquitous in today's computer systems and the technology is still
evolving. There is a review of hard disk drive technology and
construction in the early pages of this monograph that looks at the
characteristics of the disks and there it can be read that: "bit
density... continues to increase at an amazing rate", "spindle speed...
the move to faster and faster spindle speeds continue", "form factors...
the trend...is downward... to smaller and smaller drives",
"performance... factors are improving", "redundant arrays of inexpensive
disks... becoming increasingly common, and is now seen in consumer
desktop machines", "reliability... is improving slowly... it is very
hard to improve the reliability of a product when it is changing
rapidly" and finally "interfaces... continue to create new and improved
standards... to match the increase in performance of the hard disks
themselves".
