platter

[′plad·ər]

(computer science)

One of the disks in a hard-disk drive or disk pack.

platter

One of the disks in a hard disk drive. Made of aluminum or glass with a magnetic coating, each platter provides a top and bottom recording surface. There may be only one or several platters in a drive with each platter having its own pair of read/write heads. See magnetic disk.

A Whole Lotta Platters

Although solid state drives (SSDs) have become mainstream, disk platters are likely to be spinning for quite a while. This earlier 5.25" drive with 14 platters held 9GB in total. Today's disk drives have a thousand times as much data in that same amount of platter space. (Image courtesy of Singapore Technologies.)

From Spinning Platters to Solid State

The tiny Microdrive is history, and hard disk drives will eventually follow suit. See Microdrive and microSD.

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References in periodicals archive

The rotating platter consists of two disks joined with a pivot made of a 5/16-inch bolt.

The easy-go-round bino mount: build this simple device to provide steady binocular views of the night sky

According to the company, the dual-platter HDD features aerial density of 254Gb per square inch and 160GB capacity per platter. The drive also features Free Fall Sensor technology, which utilises an embedded optional motion sensor to detect if the drive is in free fall.

Toshiba introduces new 320GB small form factor hard drive

Many pubs nowadays serve up a hearty platter, but Bennetts goes the full whack by offering you a choice of four.

Tasty platters soak up the beer and chatter; dining BENNETTS, Birmingham

In an article published in 1993, Charles Platter threw down the gauntlet: "I think Bakhtin seriously underrates the complexity of Aristophanes" (209-10).

Aristophanes and the Carnival of Genres

Specialty platters include baked stuffed lobsters, cocktail shrimp platter, smoked fish platter, baked stuffed jumbo shrimp platter, swordfish kabobs, stone crab claw platter, shrimp scampi over linguini and linguini with clam sauce.

Flexing their mussels; Leominster fish market is revived

The restaurant will offer diners a CocoMos platter with Italian food, a seafood platter and a champagne platter, which will be available for two people to share or for much larger parties.

Now they'll be singing with your supper

As expected, in experiments with water or with viscous ethylene glycol, the spinning platter swirled the liquid above it to create whirlpools.

As waters part, polygons appear

The question of whether the European Union should drop its arms embargo against China may have slipped down the agenda but Austria's Defence Minister Gunther Platter has served notice that it still lingers in the background.

CHINESE ARMS EMBARGO QUESTION STILL LINGERS

With NCQ, the drive considers the location of the read/write head on the disc platter and determines the most efficient path for executing the commands, moving, like the elevator, to the command closest to the head and then to others in a similar fashion.

Supercharging SATA drive performance: Native Command Queuing makes SATA viable in workstation, server applications

John and Erica Platter helped bring south African wine to the knowledge of the rest of the world with the country's first wine travel guide, and their Africa Uncorked, Travels In Extreme Wine Territory follows the idea of unusual African wines through Africa in a travelogue which journeys from Algeria to Madagascar and beyond.

Africa Uncorked

This heavy-duty rotary table has a platter capacity (workpiece and fixture) up to 500 lb.

Face gear rotary table

You can get it in a Guiltless Chicken Platter (with rice, corn on the cob, and veggies with Parmesan cheese).

Chilis