CompuServe Messages

John, No, a drive with 6 heads can't read/write all heads at once…at least not a drive in the consumer price range. It's one head at a time, thus the answer to the second part of your question is all information is written on one side of one platter That presumes a small amount of data..small enought to fit on the free room left on a single track. Larger amounts of data are spread over the platters, one head at a time. Presuming an empty drive, when a large write is done, the first head writes as much data as it can, then the 2nd head writes as much as it can, then the 3rd head and so forth. After the last head is done writting, the head mechanism steps all the heads at once (the heads are bolted to the mechanism…they all move at once) to the next track and the process starts over again. Exactly where the write is done is controlled by the filesystem in use, that is…it decides exactly where it wants the data written and simply issues "orders" to the drive. Don