One of the most remarkable things about the storage industry is the fact that, although today's hard drives are much faster than those from yesteryear, they're still spinning at the same spindle speeds. 7,200 RPM has been the standard for desktop drives for a very long time now, supplanted only occasionally by enthusiast-oriented Raptors spinning their platters at 10,000 RPM. The enterprise world has managed to crank spindles up to 15,000 RPM, but that step up the rotational speed ladder happened more than nine years ago. Drives haven't spun their platters any faster since.
Rather than relying on higher spindle speeds to sustain a steady diet of incremental performance improvements, hard drive makers have instead increased the precision and speed with which drives can flow data back and forth to their spinning media. The amount of data stored on those spinning platters has grown, as well, and at an exponential rate. In just the last two years, we've seen platter capacities jump from 200GB to 250, 333, 375, and now 500GB.
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