X-bit labs

Started by: tygrus | Date 03/25/04

Comments: 6 | Last Comment:  05/14/08

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1. The future trend will be towards smaller hard disk drives that store less then they would otherwise (same arial density). Instead of a theoritical 3.5" having 98TB, you'll have 1.8" with 24TB. This may take 10 to 15 years before that is reached following a 12month for each doubling of density.
I predict most new systems will be using 2.5" HD in about 5 years time with upto 1.5TB on a single platter. Faster spin rates may reduce the arial density due to linear sense rates of the data heads.

2. holy crap !!!!

3. I have 2 of these on my computer w00t!

4. Sounds like M-O (Magneto-Optical) technology. It existed before CD-RW, and used a laser beam to heat the surface, where a magnetic head would force a particular polarization of the crystalline lattice structure when it cooled.

Reading was done entirely optically with a lower-powered laser beam, so no physical contact was needed. M-O disk media tends to last, almost forever. :) Too bad it's not as popular these days.

If HDs start to use this same sort of tech, I do worry about the longevity, and the thermal dissapation issues of the drives themselves. Most "thin-films" used for the magnetic recording surface in HDs today, are only a few atomic layers thick. Repeated heating/cooling cycles could easily destroy this thin surface recording layer. Plus, unlike M-O disks, reading has to be done using a low-flying head, instead of a (relatively) far-away laser read head. What if heating the surface for recording, generates a tiny "bubble" in the surface layer, and then the read head hits that bubble during the read-verify pass?

Sounds to me like they probably have a lot more issues to work out with this tech before it ever hits the mainstream market, if ever.

5. I'm doing a report for school on HAMR vs. holographic. I need to the cost of HAMR and the holographic if available please.

6. i dont like this product

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