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Terrabit Per-Square-Inch Hard Drive
BitGuy writes: "Physics News Update reports that current GMR (giant magnetoresistance) harddisk technology will not achieve terrabit-per-square-inch densities. Experiments with EMR (extra-ordinary magnetoresistive), which exceeds 100Gb/in^2 have been successful in the lab. There is even a diagram of the read head if you're interested."
I recall some things from some years ago where there were even transparent colored cubes that looked like things straight out of Star Trek, but they had problems with the registration. It was next to impossible to reseat the cube exactly correctly so that you could retain access to your data. but obviously, other solutions have worked well.
I would love for the cost of these things to come down to something reasonable for the consumer. Recalling the old Tandy laptops that some folks still use, one of advantadge of them is their virtual indestructability, all because of the solid state memory drives inside. (admitting they are small, but they work very very well indeed)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Curiously - apart from mass data storage repositories for corporations, does anyone think we'll reach a limit to the amount of data we'll need as individuals?. While we're creeping towards (and will pass) terabyte sized drives and the ability to store every piece of documentation about ourselves, it seems to me (and this may be shortsighted) that all we have left to use is high quality media files relating to our own lives.
How much would you record of yourself, your actions - in sound, video, feelings if you could... and would you edit it down, or keep everything you could.
(pondering, more than posting)
a grrl & her server
What this article is saying is that there is a new technology to move to when GMR hits it's limits. 3.5" drives won't stop at 180 GB per platter in 2 years. EMR will pick up where GMR left off and we should be able to see 1 TB per platter before they need to invent the next new technology.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
...winchester drives came out, folks were talking about how small the read gaps were and the damage a human hair or a smoke particle could cause if it got between the read head and the platter. Since hard drives were the size of a washing machine, it was pretty amazing to think that a smoke particle could ruin it. Disk drives "fly" the heads as close as they can to the platters to minimize the area being affected by the read/write signaling.
So at what point does the surface of "perfectly clean" material get so inherently bumpy that it's impossible to go any further without crashing into the random atom that sticks above its neighbors? Given the bumpiness induced by thermal agitation, are hard drives of the future going to have to be cooled just to get the heads in close enough?
http://www.holysmoke.org/sdhok/aa011.htm
When George Bush was campaigning for the presidency, as incumbent vice president, one of his stops was in Chicago, Illinois, on August 27, 1987. At O'Hare Airport
he held a formal outdoor news conference. There Robert I. Sherman, a reporter for the American Atheist news journal, fully accredited by the state of Illinois and by
invitation a participating member of the press corps covering the national candidates had the following exchange with then Vice President Bush.
Sherman: What will you do to win the votes of the Americans who are atheists?
Bush: I guess I'm pretty weak in the atheist community. Faith in god is important to me.
Sherman: Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists?
Bush: No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God.
Sherman (somewhat taken aback): Do you support as a sound constitutional principle the separation of state and church?
Bush: Yes, I support the separation of church and state. I'm just not very high on atheists.