Hitachi Aims for 10TB Drives With Laser Heat

[Niels Bohr 72]

You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have hard drives with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!

The future of speedy storage is in solid state, but the capacity advantage will still belong to the magnetic-based parts for the near future.

The one wrinkle in the evolution of hard disk drives is areal density. We may see HDDs grow to 3TB this year, but perpendicular magnetic recording technology is hitting a wall in terms of capacity.

Hitachi may have the solution to that with a method that involves lasers. The addition of lasers tends to improve almost anything, and this is no exception. A 20nm beam of light would be used to heat the storage medium while a magnetic head writes the bits.

The heat-based technology would enable smaller magnetic grains that could pave the way for 2.5 terabit per square inch -- five times the capacity of the densest hard drives of today, according to NordicHardware's explanation. This could mean hard drive sizes of 10TB.

Edited February 4, 2010 by Niels Bohr

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Whatever happened to holographic storage? I seem to remember reading about the technology a few years back but haven't heard anything for quite a while. Didn't it pan out? At the time it was supposed to be the next major advance for storage.

[Niels Bohr 72]

It's just a matter of time which technology will be deployable quickest and cheapest. Yes, holographic tech is another possibility.

When they came up with perpendicular recording on hard drive, it increased the density of the platters removing the need to introduce new tech since all they did was change the orientation of the heads.

Whatever happened to holographic storage? I seem to remember reading about the technology a few years back but haven't heard anything for quite a while. Didn't it pan out? At the time it was supposed to be the next major advance for storage.

[spookyturtle 9,466]

It's just a matter of time which technology will be deployable quickest and cheapest. Yes, holographic tech is another possibility.

When they came up with perpendicular recording on hard drive, it increased the density of the platters removing the need to introduce new tech since all they did was change the orientation of the heads.

Do you think either of these will become mainstream before SSD? Or will SSD be limited due to expense and capacity?

[Niels Bohr 72]

It looks like that SSD are limited in supply due to their production becoming inundated with other flash medias such as digital camera memory, flash drive, etc...SSD output is slow.

I wish SSD would become mainstrean soon, but, I highly doubt it would become mainstrean, if not at all.

Most applications doesn't require fast times to load into memory.

Heck, the Windows programmer sacrifice performance with visual qualities sometimes. There's a line that they have to draw to make things user friendly or high performance. Linux such as Ubuntu don't require as much resources as Windows. This is because Ubuntu doesn't provide alot of GUI as Windows. There's a tradeoff. If you want better tech, you will get a better gui not necessarily performance.

Nowadays, due to the abundance of system resources, many programmers become lazy and code inefficiently. Coding inefficiently means that they use too many 'nested for loops', creating a function that was already created in the program (they didn't want to search in the database for the function), etc...Or, they created modular programs that install the same .dll files in their directory instead of using one that already is made for another program in a different directory.

Do you think either of these will become mainstream before SSD? Or will SSD be limited due to expense and capacity?

Edited February 4, 2010 by Niels Bohr

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Why can't it be as fast as lightning and still user friendly. Just click and bang, it's onscreen.

[scandal 951]

Why can't it be as fast as lightning and still user friendly. Just click and bang, it's onscreen.

I'd like a fast as lightning click and bang, now that you mention it.

Where DID I leave those sheep... here, sheepy, sheepy! Papa is randy!

[웃 910]

I'd like a fast as lightning click and bang, now that you mention it.

Where DID I leave those sheep... here, sheepy, sheepy! Papa is randy!

Is that an inside joke or did you misspell "ready"?

[scandal 951]

Is that an inside joke or did you misspell "ready"?

What do they teach in schools these days? Is it only us "dumb libruls" that actually know what words mean any longer?

http://www.answers.com/topic/randy

ran·dy (răn'dē) pronunciation

adj., -di·er, -di·est.

1. Lascivious; lecherous.

2. Of or characterized by frank, uninhibited sexuality.

[Nagishkaw 510]

I'd like a fast as lightning click and bang, now that you mention it.

Where DID I leave those sheep... here, sheepy, sheepy! Papa is randy!

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Hard drives are a fad. The floppy is making a comeback.

[AandD 20]

its amazing..all this technology!