Dual-actuator HDD
A hard drive with two independent actuator assemblies serving different platter zones to roughly double sequential throughput.
A dual-actuator HDD puts two independent voice-coil actuator assemblies in one sealed drive, each serving roughly half the platters so both halves can seek and transfer data concurrently. Seagate’s MACH.2 (Exos 2X) literature describes up to about 2× IOPS versus a comparable single-actuator design and frames the goal as offsetting IOPS-per-TB decline as capacities grow. SAS models typically expose two LUNs (one per actuator); SATA Exos 2X appears as one device with LBA ranges mapped to each actuator (Concurrent Positioning Ranges log). This is distinct from dual-/triple-stage microactuators that only fine-position a single head stack. Western Digital has also listed dual-actuator Ultrastar products; treat each vendor’s LUN/LBA mapping as product-specific.
Relations
- related
- hdd, nearline-hdd, helium-hdd, sas
Advantages
- Near doubling of sequential read/write bandwidth versus single-actuator designs.