[rescue] Re: Small RAID array setup

[Gavin Hubbard]

<snip>

>Your idea is a variation on an idea I had ages ago about putting a
>second set of heads in a disk drive to improve random access time,
>doing concurrent reads, mising reads/writes, etc.  Problem with that
>idea is it too increases costs without a significant return in the
>rewards department.
>
>Any idea if in any recent (within 5ish years) either of these ideas
>(Andrew's or mine) has actually been put in a production drive
>(magnetic, optical, etc) ?

About a year ago I read about a small Japanese company that was developing this. They wanted to add a second read only head to the drive for web-servers and other systems on public networks. The idea was that the server process could only access data through the read head and therefore the data could never be altered.

The company was called Scarabs. Search google for "scarabs security disk" and you'll pull up articles like the following:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t403-s2119687,00.html

Regards,

Gavin