Why only one platter in slimline drives???

[LongRunner]

If they can squeeze 4 or 5 platters into a (desktop) drive 1" high, surely having 2 in a drive 0.75" high would be no problem??? Seagate had the Decathlon/Medalist SL in the mid-90s which did just that, but no drive in recent history has done the same thing. My question is, why not???

[c_hegge]

It's probably cheaper. Less platters and lower height = less materials.

[LongRunner]

It's probably cheaper.

Cheaper to do what???

I never said they should stop making 1-platter drives. I'm just asking why, if they make 1-platter drives in the slimline form, why don't they do the same for 2-platter drives??? Doing it this way, they could share a casing between 1 and 2-platter drives.

Maybe it's so they can interchange 2-platter and 3-platter drives, or maybe the supporting components for 2 platters would be just a tad too expensive, nowadays, to use them in 1-platter drives. (There used to be drives that used the same supporting components throughout the entire range of capacities. None of those anymore.)