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The Hard Drive Controller
The 160GB Momentus 5400.3 hard drive uses what appears to be a custom-made hard drive controller from ST Microelectronics.
We couldn't find out anything about this controller, even after searching through STMicroelectronics' website. But this hard drive controller should not differ much from others in its job of managing the transfer of data between the drive and the host.
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The hard drive controller |
Its connection to the drive |
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It's connected to the hard drive compartment via an 18-pin connector located at the upper right corner of the drive's underside.
The Motor Drive Controller
Seagate also used a motor drive controller from ST Microelectronics. Again, this appears to be a custom chip, made specifically for Seagate.
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The motor drive controller |
Its connection to the drive |
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The main advantage of using this chip is ST's proprietary Smooth Drive pseudo-sinusoidal digital drive technology. Smooth Drive allows the hard drive to minimize torque ripple to reach a higher track density as well as reduce acoustic noise.
The Cache Buffer
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The 160GB Momentus 5400.3 comes with 8MB of buffer memory, courtesy of a single
54-pin TSOP II SDRAM chip from Etron Technology.
The Etron Technology EM638165TS-6G is a 64Mbit SDRAM chip rated at 60ns. It has a maximum bandwidth of 333MB/s at the rated clock speed of 166MHz.
For those who are interested in the details, this SDRAM chip supports a CAS latency of 2 or 3 and burst lengths of 1, 2, 4, 8 or the full page. It also has an auto-refresh feature although it's rated for a refresh cycle of 15.6 µs.
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