Which track was least reliable?

From: Jack Peacock <peacock_at_simconv.com>
Date: Tue Aug 25 14:11:14 1998

> "On disk platters," he said, "the inside track
> is the least reliable one."
>
This was true when drives were formatted with the same number of sectors
on each track, regardless of position. Because the inner tracks had a
shorter circumference, the bit density was highest on the innermost
track. Now that drives are not directly addressed by
cylinder/head/sector, the number of sectors can vary by track, so bit
density is evenly distributed, outer tracks have more sectors than inner
tracks.

Where you see this limitation was on older MFM and RLL drives where the
controller was not integrated onto the drive itself (pre-SCSI and
pre-IDE).
       Jack Peacock
Received on Tue Aug 25 1998 - 14:11:14 BST

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