New type of hard drive to be released

Not like your normal h/d, which spins and is written on like a CD. This is instead the perpendicular drive. Basically, it moves the bit vertical, writes the information, and lays it back down, magentically. Storage space is going to increase by ten-fold.

This site here explains the basics: http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/research/recording_head/pr/PerpendicularAnimation.html

But in 2-3 years, we will be seeing hard drives with 2-3 Terabytes worth of storage. And with 1GB ethernet cabling, it will be written, read, and transmitted in the same time as it currently takes. This is the biggest advancement in hard drives in the past 30 years.

Toshiba just made a 80GB h/d that is going to be released in Sept. And Toshiba provides H/D's for Apple, so that means the ipods are going to soon have even more storage space in a smaller casing. And with sizing, it could eventually be possible to store up to 200GB worth of music on an ipod. Basically, that means you could listen to your ipod every minute of every day for just over 5 months and not hear a repeat song once.

And then there is the holographic media as well, which can store up to 300GB of info on a write-once disk. 1 Terabyte disks will be available in 2009 should they do the proper marketing and release.

 

I remember the good ole days when 16 megs of ram you were the king..........

 

16 Megs?! I remember 16K!

Don't even get me started on 300bps.

C.

 

Reading all about this new Hard Drive technology is making my own drive hard.....

There is such thing as 1GB ethernet cabling? Show me to this product. Anyone here have any exp using that cable? I need something like that here at work, but the cabling is severly limiting our workstations. I dont think its anywhere near 1GB. I think its around 10MB....

 

300bps... ahh yes, those acoustic couplers. Remember helping with Heathkit's BBS back in the day just before the 20MB Winchester HD came out (early 1984). But before that, back in 1972 or so, was with my older brother at the Atlanta Computer center where my (very gifted computer programmer at age 11 or so) brother would work magic with punch cards. The guy was a genious!

Ahhh yes, that is when a line of code was a LINE (card) of code (80).

Also remember dad using paper tape rolls to program the company's system.

 

You haven't heard of gigabit ethernet? Are you in Sydney or Alice Springs? http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps5528/index.html http://www.3com.com/products/en_US/detail.jsp?tab=features&pathtype=purchase&sku=3C2000-T

There's also 10GB XENPAK interfaces for backbones, but I don't think there are any computer NIC cards for this, yet. http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/modules/ps5251/products_device_support_table09186a00803857e7.html

The nerds could get a debate going over 10G ether versus OC48 ATM. But the nerdspeak fallout would be hazardous to the "normal" people.

But as far as claims of "real soon now" advances in storage go: All I can say is: Bubble Memory.

 

interesting, very interesting.

 

The cat5E (currently 10/100mbps) is a great cable and speeds are hardly maxed out with that. The 1GB ethernet cables have yet to be released. But with the new processings speeds in computing, the storage spacing, data availability will definitely be an issue. What is the point on storing 3TB of info on your computer if it takes 2 days to upload it to, say, an ipod.

The new technology becoming available will release a new wave of computing. With 64 bit processing, perpendicular drives, 1GB cabling, and 5-6mhz multi-processor computers.

You do know that the Playstation 3 has 8 3.2GZ processor in it right? And it is smaller than the average computer tower, with a removable 2.5" H/D. That is a massive amount of processing speed(25.6GHZ worth of processors). 1 main 3.2GHZ processor, and 7 secondary ones. But it is also being billed has now controlling home entertainment, not just the latest and greatest Gran Turismo game.

Imagine your computer with 25.6GHZ of processing speed. Can you say stupid fast?

 

Yeah, Sony is trying to take on MicroSoft in this but i have a feeling MS will win simply due to their extensive market saturation with OS. Also, MS has some impressive compression schemes and pretty much gives them away for free.

 

The hard drive is going to be dead technology within twenty years. The future
is SD or Solid State discs using flash ram. Hard drives are going to be
used for storing large info bits that can't store on flash.

At this point in time, 200 gigs is A LOT of storage, and most people cant
fill it up. You can run most business workstations on under 20 gigs including
office etc. Flash ram SD would be perfect for this, since its tiny in size,
there are no moving parts so points of failure are reduced, the read and
write times are about one tenth of the speed of hard drives, and the data
can store forever. Think about it, a hard drive that doesnt crash...

For more data intensive applications, a SD / Disc combo would be more
powerfull, where you have a SD primary / Disc secondary drive, and let
windows store data that is critical / needs quickly on the SD drive, and large
files on the hard drive. Something like this hybrid would change the
computer of today significantly. Huge speed / reliability increases for
minimal cost.

This would be of course to the point where SD drives get big and inexpensive
enough to be mass produced and would replace hard drives forever. Hard
drives would at this point, become like the tape reels of 20 years ago,
used for ultra massive storage and archiving.

 

Flash memory is great. But comparitively, the H/D's are smaller and hold more information, and is much cheaper. I think that once the technology develops to lower the cost and increase capacity, it will be do-able.

But I do not see that happening in the next 2 years, whereas the perpendicular drives are going to have massive space. And who would want to drop back down to a 10,20, or even 60GB hard drive, when for the same cost, you can have a 2TB drive?

It will take time, but solid state memory will overtake H/D's. but I do not see that coming for a few more years, at least 4-5.

 

Well, As I stated above, next 20 years. More likely 10.

Right now, the application space usage for software has not
increased in speed with the size of drive capacity. I think the ratio
is like 50%. At the same time, flash is growing at the same pace
as disc in capacity and cost, thus eventually there will be a crossing
line where flash cost + capacity and the application capacity usage
cross, and this is where the transition will take place.

Disc drives have no future OTHER then in massive long term storage.
They are mechanical devices and the cost will eventually outweigh the
benefits. Mechanical devices fail (dont get me wrong flash dies too),
so the Mean Time Between Failures is almost nothing with flash vs
disk drives. They will both have their uses, but one will replace the
other.