Nickel Sensors Could Raise Hard Disk Capacity

Makarand writes "Tiny filaments of nickel, thinner than a wavelength of visible light, acting as magnetic sensors may expand the storage capacity of hard disks many times. Although, technologies exist to increase hard disk capacity, reading data bits reliably from such disks has proven difficult because as data bits become smaller their magnetic fields are weaker and difficult to pick up. Nickel filaments are capable of picking up of these weak magnetic fields using a phenomenon called "ballistic magnetoresistance" which is not completely understood. As the sensors are only a few atoms wide the electrons travel along a straight line in the conductor greatly enhancing the binary signal picked up from the data bits. These sensors could also be used to detect biomolecules in low concentrations."

Comments

Bloody hell.

[caluml]

Tiny filaments of nickel, thinner than a wavelength of visible light,

Is it just me or are we getting too clever? :)
Soon we'll be storing gigabytes on a single atom...

Re:Bloody hell.

[wideBlueSkies]

So how many Libraries Of Congress will we be able to save on a medium the size of an O'Reilly book?

Re:Bloody hell.

[Genyin]

So how many Libraries Of Congress will we be able to save on a medium the size of an O'Reilly book?
42

Re:Bloody hell.

[Wolfrider]

--Yep. I don't think they should be attempting this with MAGNETIC storage tech. We already have 7200 RPM disks that are failing in a year. Let's go to the next level, people...

--3D holographic storage, anyone? ...Bueller?

Spin states

[SirCrashALot]

That depends on how many spins an atom can have at once:) Welcome to the world of quatum mechanics.

Is it wise ?

[Anonymous Coward]

To store critical (or any data of some value ie: not junk) data on technology that is so vunurable to external forces if the technology is so small/fragile ?

wouldnt it be better to concentrate on more reliable rather than greater storage ?

Re:Is it wise ?

[TheSHAD0W]

Actually, making this stuff smaller has made it LESS fragile, not more. Less weight and shorter distance from bearing points means less torque and strain. 5-1/4" HDs were quite fragile, but 2.5" laptop drives are very hardy. And just try causing a head-crash on a Microdrive.

I suspect, if this technology ever makes it to market, it'll be in a package that keeps it nice and safe.

Re:Is it wise ?

[swordgeek]

Hmm. Several points come to mind.

1) So what's so unreliable about current storage? Disks can and do eventually die, but so do ***ALL*** mechanical devices. The magnetic lifespan of a disk is not clearly the limiting factor in the life of a hard drive. Half of the drives I replace die as a fail to spin up properly--not something we like to see, but an indication that the short life of the magnetic states aren't the most unreliable part of a hard drive.

2) I don't see any indication that this is 'fragile' technology, on the macroscopic scale. Sure the signals are smaller, but once you reliably detect them they can be amplified ad nauseum, and reliable detection is what this is all about.

3) Large scale enterprise storage in our current realm of thinking, requires high speed access and high reliability, and does NOT involve single drives. Hardware RAID5, RAID 1+0, RAID 5+0 (I've seen it done!) etc. is the way to get high reliability and high performance. Having a single hard drive, even one that's 100% reliable, isn't a reasonable storage solution for mission critical data, and so consequently there's not a lot of demand for a 100% reliable hard drive.

Re:Is it wise ?

[Waffle Iron]

To store critical (or any data of some value ie: not junk) data on technology that is so vunurable to external forces if the technology is so small/fragile ?

There was a brief time a few decades ago when the essence of my entire being was contained in a single molecule, with no backups! Luckily, I made it through that episode relatively unscathed.

Ever since then, I've been making backups like crazy.

Re:Is it wise ?

[shogun]

There was a brief time a few decades ago when the essence of my entire being was contained in a single molecule, with no backups! Luckily, I made it through that episode relatively unscathed.
Ever since then, I've been making backups like crazy.

I'm yet to make any fully redundant backups myself as opposed to your incremental ones, however I fear there may have %50 data loss in any such backups and the data space will have to be shared with someone elses.

Re:Is it wise ?

[YU Nicks NE Way]

You only have one chromosome and reproduce asexually? Wow! /. news for bugs, stuff that infects.

Re:Is it wise ?

[anethema]

Maybe that says that we should be concentrating on fast solid state storage rather than trying to minimize the stuff we have now. Hard drives are currently the slowest and most unreliable equipment in our PCs today. Sounds like thats the bottleneck scientists should be working on.

Re:Is it wise ?

[NETHED]

I head crashed a MicroDrive with a stern look.

Re:Is it wise ?

[michael_cain]

Amusing, yes, but not entirely accurate. At best you were contained in 46 molecules, each chromosome being a separate DNA molecule. Actually, you were never less than a single cell, made up of a very large number of molecules, including complex structures like mitochondria which are critical to cell function but do not appear to be coded for in regular DNA.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my mother for my mitochondria, and to thank my wife for providing my kids with mitochondria, since Dad and I (and males in general) can't be bothered with such picky little details...

Re:Is it wise ?

[rtaylor]

The backup process isn't so bad -- but have you tried a restore yet?

Re:Is it wise ?

[red_dragon]

I head crashed a MicroDrive with a stern look.

The Magnum?

Re:Is it wise ?

[Thomas M Hughes]

Having a single hard drive, even one that's 100% reliable, isn't a reasonable storage solution for mission critical data...

Sorry to nit-pick, but if a drive is 100% reliable, then it will never, ever fail. Maybe you meant like 99.9999% or something. But if its 100% reliable, that means its 100% reliable. Though, nothing is ever 100%.

Re:Is it wise ?

[Nevermore-Spoon]

Generally speaking a drive that is 100% reliable probably isn't 100% fireproof

Re:Is it wise ?

[Wolfrider]

--Ya know, there's actually *some* merit to that... Stone lasts for THOUSANDS OF YEARS.

Re:Is it wise ?

[swordgeek]

No no no. You're missing my point entirely.

I mean 100% reliable. A theoretical 100% reliable. Data will never go sour or get corrupted. Ever.

In that mythical case, it's still not a good storage solution. 100% data reliability doesn't factor in a bomb or a fire. Nor does it factor in the potential of a power loss (which might not affect reliability, but will affect availability), or for that matter, the limit of a single connection to the computer.

My point is that there are many reasons for using multiple hard drives in multiple cabinets OTHER than just reliability.

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tiny filaments of nickel, thinner than a wavelength of visible light

Then how do we know they're there?

Re:Huh?

[comptrav]

Visual light takes up just a small segment of the electromagnetic spectrum. There are shorter wavelengths they can use to detect it.

Re:Huh?

[Andorion]

Notice the above was modded +1 Funny, not +1 Insightful

-Berj

Re:Huh?

[Drakula]

Using a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) or an Atomic Force Micoscope (AFM) would be my guess.

Re:Huh?

[Jugalator]

Still, it says "thinner" than a wavelength. It would make more sense if it said "shorter" than a wavelength.

Ballistic?

[TheSHAD0W]

I dunno... First we had giant magnetoresistance, then colossal magnetoresistance... Ballistic just doesn't seem to fit. We should call it gargantuan magnetoresistance, or Herculean... I know! Let's call it "humongous magnetoresistance"!

Re:Ballistic?

[iomud]

I vote for ludicrous magnetoresistance.

Re:Ballistic?

[modecx]

Our platters have gone plaid!

Re:Ballistic?

[Drakula]

Using scanning electron microsopy (SEM) would be my guess.

Re:Ballistic?

[rtscts]

Sounds like the HDD mfr's are collecting powerups...

Berserker magnetoresistence!

Re:Ballistic?

[pacc]

Ballistic doesn't refer to any new physical principle. It's the fact that the nickel layer is just a few nm thick that removes statistical properties such as resistance since there just aren't enough atoms in the thin layer for electrons to collide with, hence ballistic electrons. Prepare for ballistic transistors when they grow sufficiently small.

Re:Ballistic?

[baldysm]

Atleast use something original for terminology. Humongous magentoresistance musta been used by either Spiderman or Iron Man comic strips.

I hope IBM don't have anything to do with this...

[Zog The Undeniable]

...as I had the first HDD failure warning this evening on my "auto destruct after 12 months" IBM 60GXP. I wouldn't mind so much if it had been hammered, but it's in a PC that gets used about twice a month. Does 99.9% of the population care less about the availability of 200GB hard drives? Surely the priority should be data security, then speed (it's the biggest bottleneck in your PC), then capacity?

Advances in storage technology

[Karamchand]

Where and when will I - a normal consumer - be able to notice all those fantastic advances, like pixie dust, nickel filaments etc.? Sure, I notice a nice increase in storage capacity, a decrease in cost (and a warranty decrease;) - but nowhere I can see fantastic, large changes!

Re:Advances in storage technology

[Cali Thalen]

Computer evolution is starting to look like biological evolution (sorry to all the Creationists...)

Back when computers were akin to our old 1-cell relatives, it didn't take much to have a serious jump in usefulness. But now that they (and we) are vastly more complicated, significant improvements in individual aspects of the technology don't seem to affect the whole system as much, so they seem so much less exciting.

As I see it, progress is going to be coming more and more in small steps, taking much longer to affect a huge change.

But please, feel free to prove me wrong, I'd love to see the kind of jumps in usefulness that compters experienced back in the 80's.

Re:Advances in storage technology

[Ramze]

Considering our knowledge of the universe is expanding exponentially, I'd be willing to bet computers will still see an exponential growth in speed until we hit the nanotech level, then as we learn new methods of organizing structures at taht level and develop new methods of programming, we'll continue to move along at a steady rate of increased usefulness.

Re:Advances in storage technology

[Jerf]

If you haven't seen the advances then you haven't been looking. The recent sudden jump to hundreds of gigabytes on the cheap, for instance, is AFAIK the result of this IBM research. Yes, that article talks about 16.8 GB drives but that was just the first one available under that technology; I believe it is used in all high-capacity drives now.

There is no real marketing benefit to describing the real tech behind such devices, only assigning them buzzwords and hyping them up, so you only see stupid buzzwords.

The computer industry is actually very good about getting major advances in the hands of consumers on a time scale measured in months after the practical advances are made.

Re:Advances in storage technology

[PetWolverine]

I agree completely. The concept of a graphical interface is still the biggest advance in interface design ever seen, and it happened how many decades ago? Going from tapes to disks was a huge leap, but if (and it's a big if) we ever see such a huge conceptual leap in data storage techniques again, there's no way we'll ever see such incredible performance (meaning speed, reliability and capacity) increases from a single advance.

That's not to say we won't see large, gradual advances...as your analogy implies, the difference between today's storage and tomorrow's could be the difference between a slime mold and a sparrow.

Re:Advances in storage technology

[Saeger]

Actually, you're suffering from a bit of nearsightedness.

You see, the automobile and aircraft belong to the set of all transportation - which is what you should be comparing computing to - so when one form of transportation seems to have hit a plateau, another form always picks up where the former left off. What you end up with is a series of overlapping S-curves which underlies the overall exponential increase in progress. It's this pattern which you should be aware of.

Legpower -> Horsepower -> Railroad -> Automobile -> Airplane -> Jetliner -> Chemical Rocket -> Ion Propulsion -> FTL. Speed and capability increasing exponentially...

Same with computing:

Electromechanical -> Relay -> Vacuum Tubes -> Transistor -> ICs -> building 3D circuits instead of 2D -> etc.

--

Re:Advances in storage technology

[k98sven]

Computer evolution is starting to look like biological evolution (sorry to all the Creationists...)

What do you mean?
On the sixth day (1986), God created a computer in his image.

The Amiga.

Re:Advances in storage technology

[mmol_6453]

I thought he created a backup in his image. Pity it's been corrupted and repaired so many times.

New HD technology!

[apoc.famine]

If I had a nickel for every time...

Of course

[mccalli]

The more nickels you apply, the higher capacity hard drive you will get.

Phhh. I knew that and I'm not even American...

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Of course

[T-Kir]

I suppose that idea also works with the time diminishing Hard Drive warranties we seem to be getting now.

the speed?

[Sophrosyne]

How much slower will hard drives be? Or will they get faster? ...it just sounds slower to me,
Shouldn't more reasearch be made into solid state memory? I'm not a big fan of hard drive noises and grinding... but hey any research is good research :)

Re:the speed?

[Sophrosyne]

sure if you find anything let me know

going ballistic

[updog]

using a phenomenon called "ballistic magnetoresistance" which is not completely understood

Now the term "going ballistic" has a whole new meaning!

This sounds cool though, sounds like Moore's law will keep moving along...

New sensation

[Autonymous Toaster]

Chopra said the sensors also could be used to detect biomolecules, even in low concentrations. Each organic molecule could have its own fingerprint in terms of affecting whiskers' voltage.

Though the data storage application could certainly serve to fund the development and popularisation of this technology, it seems possible that in the long term the quoted "secondary" application may actually be the primary one. If the device can be tuned to detect virtually anything, it has obvious applications in industrial processes, bomb detection, and so on. This is incremental to existing efforts in these areas.

However, if it can be further trained to distinguish, it essentially amounts to an electronic "sense of smell". This is very exciting and has innumerable applications, especially in combination with other sensor devices and realtime feedback mechanisms involving both software and hardware.

A hypothetical consumer application might be to control the temperature that a bread product is grilled at, bringing it to a perfect (and user-selectable) stated of brownness, while turning down the heat in individual spots at the slightest hint of burning. Wonderful development

Re:New sensation

[AlephNot]

"A hypothetical consumer application might be to control the temperature that a bread product is grilled at..."

How fitting that you should mention that, given your nick. :-)

Re:New sensation

[tekunokurato]

Especially after the machines have taken over and extinguished all other organic life- it'll be useful to detect any dissenting microbes

*cough*

[TheSHAD0W]

You probably haven't noticed because not only are capacities going up, costs are going down as well. That 200 gig hard drive is selling for less money than 200 meg drives were when they first came out. The capacities are becoming so enormous that they're threatening to become meaningless; most computer users wouldn't know the difference between a 60 gig drive and a 20. (They might not even know where to look to find out which they have, for that matter.) As a result, companies are spending as much of their resources on dropping prices as they are boosting size.

Re:An Open Source Solution?

[eyegone]

This is insightful?

Cool..

[Anonymous Coward]

"ballistic magnetoresistance"

Last time a drive failed on me, I made it go ballistic too, and it offered little resistance (however the concrete offered considerable resistance). Is this a similar thing?

Not fully understood

[gmuslera]

It works, but they don't know how. Looks like a recipe to future problems.

If this works, in a production environment when it exposed to certain radiation, radio signals, heat/cold, etc it not, will be dangerous to rely in that kind of things.

"It's Magic!" is ok for childrens, but not if you want do to something serious.

Doesn't matter

[CedgeS]

Spontaneous flipping still poses an upper limit to magnetic data storage capacity. Basically, if you cram lots of bits too close together, they will start flipping each other.

see: http://domino.watson.ibm.com/comm/wwwr_thinkresear ch.nsf/pages/frontier399.html

under storing information for info on pushing this limit

Re:Doesn't matter

[jerde]

PLEASE, take the time to make a link a link. It's really not hard, saves people time (and the frustration of the extra spaces in URLs) and it makes the world a better place*.

The link is to:

An article about IBM research

- Peter

*hyperbole

Re:Doesn't matter

[Rhinobird]

Basically, if you cram lots of bits too close together, they will start flipping each other.


Dude...that explains NY. Too many humans crammed together and they just start spontaneously flipping each other off.

Re:An Open Source Solution?

[goatasaur]

Seems more informative than anything else...

I bet the boys as Inco are happy to hear this

[TerryAtWork]

The they figure out - Geez, you use a handfull of nickle and you can make enough nanosensors to supply the geek industry for a year...

Re:Don't need it.

[kdgibson]

"At the very least a $1000 tax should be laid on all hard disk drives over 2GB." Are you insane? 2GB?!?

or even better

[SHEENmaster]

a 2^9C magnetic field for a single bit. The data would last FOREVER and have hardly any degredation! Now we'll just need a few warehouses to store it, anyone want to invest?

Re:or even better

[EggplantMan]

... 2^9 C magnetic field C? Aren't magnetic fields measured in Teslas?

What gets me..

[di0s]

What chafes my drawers is that fact that we're looking to increase capacity and not reliability. Isn't the average life span of a hard drive only about 5-7 years? What ever happend to solid state storage??

Re:What gets me..

[rcs1000]

Reliability and capacity are largely interchangeable. That's what RAID is for...

Re:What gets me..

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Or rather, you can trade one for the other. I was shocked to find people selling 10k rpm 36GB for 80 or 90 bucks the other day. I imagine that IDE is even cheaper.

Re:What gets me..

[Paul Komarek]

I have one question for you. Where? Where did you find 10K SCSI drives for those prices?

-Paul Komarek

Re:What gets me..

[Doppler00]

Drives that last 5-7 years? Most drives are lucky to last even 3 years now. The question is, if data density doesn't increase will we have any reason to buy new harddrives before they fail? Someday we may just buy replacement drives of the same capacity regularly as old ones fail. Oh well.

Re:What gets me..

[gregfortune]

Check pricewatch.com, but be careful not to get burned. $80 drives are listed, but that seems mighty low... As always, buyer beware :)

Re:What gets me..

[addaon]

Solid state storage is here today. I just built a silent PC... epia 5000 fanless motherboard, dc-to-dc (that's the brand, actually, as well as a description) fanless ATX power supply, solid state (obviously) ram, and solid state (http://www.satech.com/disonmoddom4.html was my provider) disk. total cost was about $300, including custom case, so there's no real argument about that, either. Performance is designed to fit my needs, not greatest possible. And I'll wager the thing lasts 50 years, given that it's in a fully sealed inert atmosphere, temperature never goes about 40 celcius, and internal humidity approaches zero. Oh yeah, and there's software which remaps around bad bits on disk or ram, so normal failures are acceptable there (although it may be forced to reboot if kernel memory is corrupt... fortunately, I'm using a fully journaling file system, not just meta-data journalling, so that, too, is okay). Total price, again, around $300, and reliability is quite satisfactory. What are people complaining about again?

Re:What gets me..

[addaon]

Sorry about replying to myself, but it just occured to me. If people are interested in more info about this, send me an e-mail (adam at addaon.com). If enough people show interest, I'll write up an article. If not, I'll just answer questions as they come in. And to forestall the most common question -- it's not running linux.

Re:What gets me..

[alannon]

Given that the flash drive that you purchased is only (according to the specs) rated for 1,000,000 write cycles, what makes you think that it's going to last even as long as a typical HD, let alone 50 years? Speaking of that, is using a fully journaled file system a good idea? That turns every write to disk into two writes to disk, effectively cutting your drive life in half. Also, with such a tiny HD capacity (how many 512meg modules can the drive hold? 4? 8?) what makes you think the machine will be useful in even 3 years, let alone 50? I suppose if you have a particularly specialized need for a 'solid state' computer, it would be useful, but not for a general-purpose machine.

Re:What gets me..

[addaon]

You hit the nail on the head. I have a specialized need. Capacity wasn't an issue; for various reasons, I'm using two 128MB modules, and that's all I need. On the other hand, the write limits don't really concern me. As I'm using custom software, I can trade off the number of write cycles in exchange for reliability. I basically limit it to a maximum of one write per location per hour, and start moving things around on the disk if a single section consistently gets more writes than that. Again, also, I can check after each write whether it worked; if not, I just mark that byte bad, and go to a reserved backup area. Assuming my usage patterns stay relatively similar, or even double, the number of write cycles shouldn't be an issue for roughly a century.

Furthermore, I did destructive testing on a smaller unit (32MB) to get a sense of how accurate that 1M write cycle number is, since it did worry me for a bit. 1% of the write locations (byte sized) failed after 200k writes, going up to 2% at 500k, skyrocketing ;-) to 5% at 1M. Clearly not quite linear, but I'm not too worried. At 10M writes per location, 65% of locations were still writeable. Not ideal, I'd admit (that brings a 128MB disk down to ~83MB), but again, that would take a millenium with my usage patterns. (Currently, I'm reserving 16MB out of 128MB for repcing bad sectors. 16% bad sectors occured at around 4M writes.)

So you're right in that this isn't necessarily feasible for a standard PC. On the other hand, with different usage patterns, you could easily just use a RAM disk. A good sized linux installation is reasonable in 2GB; this is under a thousand dollars in compact flash, with direct compact flash to IDE adapters. 2GB of ram, likewise, is only a few hundred dollars. On boot, make a ramdisk. Only write back to flash if you get nervous; or do it once an hour, and last a century. (Note also that most IDE drivers do bad sector remapping; it's not ideal, because it uses 512B blocks instead of the 1B blocks that flash actually fails in, but it's zero modification to existing code.) Needless to say, it would be more expensive than normal to build a computer this way, but it really wouldn't be off the scale.

Re:What gets me..

[aka1nas]

I am actually considering using that same VIA EPIA setup you mentioned and was thinking about using a CompactFlash with an IDE adapter to boot off of. I was planning on using a trimmed down Linux Kernel and using a RAMDisk of some sort. Any tips or insights on working with this setup? This would also be a specialized setup, so I wouldn't need full PC functionality. Also, what casing are you using and is there a website that you got most of your information from?

Re:What gets me..

[addaon]

Nope, unfortunately not. Currently I'm using the most bootleg case imaginable... the box it's cut out of. I'm transitioning to a cast nylon one, lines with metal mesh (screen door stuff), as soon as I can get a few minutes on the water jet. Using a compact flash adapter is a definitely cheaper than using a disk-on-module device, but it's also significantly bigger. Most cf adapters I've seen either mount vertically, or require a cable... the first bringing total high from 0.5" to 2" or so, and the other giving another point of failure. For the power supply, there are lots of things out there, but the simplest is the dc-to-dc I mentioned... and it's a small circuit board, the longest side is shorter than the epia, so it won't increase your total length much. Linux supposedly is quite comfortable on the machine although, again, I haven't tried it. Be aware that you don't have a floppy connector, so you'll either have to boot off cd, use a usb floppy drive, or just use another computer to install. Also, the machine may not need a fan, but it gets quite warm. I haven't been able to get a full power reading (some friend borrowed the damn multimeter again), but I suspect it's between 10 and 15 watts in the configuration described, including losses in the power supply. If you're particularly space strapped, and you're not thinking of keeping a CD in their permanently, you may want to consider something much smaller than the 55W dc-to-dc.

I presume you know of mini-itx.com. They're great, if you're looking for wacky case ideas. For a simply case, though, I'd really consider going down to your neighborhood metal shop or carpenter, and just showing him what you need. I think the epia's are particularly suited to a wood case, and it's certainly simpler or cheaper. Consider the metal mesh for radio shielding, if you care about such things; evcen in a sealed, non-head-conductive box, heating is no problem for at least 72 hours (haven't tested longer totally sealed). I recommend some ventilation holes, of course. The commercial cases seem great, but they're all designed for people who need disk drives. If you don't, it's probably more than you want.

The other note is that low-profile ram is available for just a buck or two extra and, at least in my configuration, the ram is the highest point besides PCI cards. Again, if you're using a cf adapter, that may or may not be the case. For PCI cards, you can use a right-angle adapter to reduce total height. You can also get a two-pci-slot adapter (right-angle), which gives you two full slots. I'm not using one currenty, but I tested two 8-serial-port cards at once, and they worked gorgeously.

I've never been as happy with an x86 machine, in terms of reliability and efficiency, as I am with the epia, and I highly recommend getting one to play with, especially at the price. And you get to laugh at everyone who talks about quieter fans and insultation to make a quiet pc... 0dB is nothing to sneer at.

Re:An Open Source Solution?

[daaan]

fuck insightful, is this even relevant to anything that i have ever seen on /.? never mind relevant to this story, relevant to anything...

Am I the only one

[WhaDaYaKnow]

that get's a little nervous about the idea that my data is accessed through a sensor 'only a few atoms wide'?

Re:Am I the only one

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, so shut the fuck up.

Re:Am I the only one

[c0d3fu]

If you think about it, the technology your using right now is freaking amazing... the ability to to communicate with billions of computers on the internet, process data at lightning fast speed, all with technology that both you and I don't understand. Plus, humanity is on the verge of taking the big leap into light-based (quantum) processors that are made up of carbon nanotubes. "Magnetic RAM" is only a decade away. Computers may even go biological in our lifetime.

Too small for my liking

[EsperHunter]

"As the sensors are only a few atoms wide" I wonder if they would dislodge/misalign if you dropped the hard drive by accident, or even moved it to fast.

Re:Too small for my liking

[Tailhook]

Structures this small have very little mass. While I don't care to attempt to calculate this, I suppose it's possible that a wire only few atoms wide might be capable of sustaining tremendous acceleration. Would something with so little mass survive >100G acceleration? If so, it could withstand more force than the device that encloses it.

Re:I hope IBM don't have anything to do with this.

[AlgebraicSpore]

Most people do not need large 200GB drives for their home computers but they are often used in servers. The advancement of servers is helping to get a more stable web community and since the internet is currently the main driving force behind computers this is quite important.

Re:I hope IBM don't have anything to do with this.

[Maul]

I agree. I think that the hard drive manufacturers need to stop focusing on how big they can make drives, and to start focusing on ways to make drives more reliable. A 200 GB drive is useless if it dies after six months.

I disagree

[droleary]

"It's Magic!" is ok for childrens, but not if you want do to something serious.

I hereby declare this technology sufficiently advanced!

IBM's M.O.

[Sophrosyne]

I've also heard of IBM working on Holographic storage, Crystal Storage, and Molecular Storage.... It just seems IBM's R&D groups are more interested in winning patents than actually pumping out viable products-- they aren't exactly known for their innovations in the modern computer age, and are probably more interested in trying to attract US Gov't investments.
Now how long will it be before Steve Jobs comes along, flirts with the CEO of IBM and steals everything only to have Bill Gates come along and steal it off him...

Re:Don't need it.

[Mr_Tulip]

3 reasons why you _do_ need more than 2Gb:

1.Just had a quick look at my Icewind Dale game box: Requires 800 MB free disk space.

2.Even compressed MPEG2 video streams run to almost 1Gb per hour.. How would I make a VCD (to play on the DVD player) out of my home video?

3.Lastly, Windows XP Pro, installed, takes around 1Gb of space (omg.. that's just ridiculous.. someone shoot me for using XP, I _must_ be a terrorist)

All I Want...

[Cyno01]

Is 1 TB on my keychain for under $10, and all i want to know is how soon!??

What about performance?

[eyegone]

Storage vendors seem to be obsessed with capacity, mostly to the exclusion of performance. I already have customers wasting 75%+ of their disk capacity so that they can spread their data over enough drives to get the performance they need.

Microscopic $/MB is great, but only if you use all those megabytes.

Re:What about performance?

[kelleher]

Agreed. We only add storage to the primary Mktg/Fin Oracle server in increments of ~560GB to maintain our stripe width (and it's only 8). Since we're stuck with an EMC frame (prior decision and politics beyond my control) this means we only buy in $40,000 chunks.

If you understand corporate accounting, you'll realize how badly this sucks... Making existing drives faster and more reliable is what I need - not bigger.

Slashdot's newest troll?

[resin8]

Check his posting history; all his posts mention toast. It's still good for a chuckle because it's only his second day posting.

10 toast related posts in the last 24 hours. Anonymous Toaster will have to be pretty creative to keep up that pace without getting on everyone's nerves (hot grits, anyone?) Anyway, that's what keeps things interesting around here:)

Re:Slashdot's newest troll?

[Autonymous Toaster]

"Anonymous Toaster"

I know I shouldn't respond to this sort of thing, but I just have to point out that there is nothing anonymous about making toast. Every slice is a personal triumph, and it's always sad to see them go.

Also, I have many other interests. Toasted bread products just happen to be predominant among them. I don't think there's any particular "pattern" to my posts, as you allude.

Finally, I'm not sure what a "troll" is, but it sounds like it involves fish of some sort, something which toasts particularly poorly (believe me!). That's just an observation.

Anyway I hope there are no hard feelings. And if there are, I bet I know something warm and crispy that would make them melt away!

I have a problem with this

[decarelbitter]

Quote:
'a phenomenon called "ballistic magnetoresistance" which is not completely understood'

Now, would you trust your data to a phenomenon that is not completely understood? I know I wouldn't

Re:I have a problem with this

[murphj]

Now, would you trust your data to a phenomenon that is not completely understood? I know I wouldn't

Actually, I don't still don't completely understand how floppy disks work, let alone modern hard drives.

Dude

[TheOnlyCoolTim]

You trust your EXISTENCE to phenomena that are not completely understood.

Tim

Technobabble!

[Jogar the Barbarian]

Ballistic Magnetoresistance?? Souds almost like technobabble; I had a funny thought that you could automatically generate alerts like this every six months using a random "new technology" generator.

June 2003: Scientists have found they can dramatically increase hard drive capacity using *Ferrous Multipliers*!

January 2004: Scientists have found they can dramatically increase hard drive capacity using *Quantum Isolators*!

June 2004: Scientists have found they can dramatically increase hard drive capacity using *Magneto Flux Capacitors*!

this is neat and all but

[JeanBaptiste]

I am not so concerned about packing more into less at the moment as disk space (ide anyways) is soooo cheap... I would be much more interested in technologies that improve seek times or improve rpms without having to go to a big expensive raid array....

Great, Just Freaking Great.....

[Not The Real Me]

I've got a bad 41GB IDE HD with bad sectors, a bad 30GB with bad sectors, a dead 20GB HD and a 60GB IDE HD that is acting irrational. I've also RMA'd three 30GB IDE HDs in the last year.

The ironic thing is I've got five 5.25" full height 9GB SCSIs that are 10+ years old and they work PERFECTLY!

Before increasing capacity, I'd rather see them increase RELIABILITY. I don't care what they specs say about MTBF. I want real world reliability because I am tired of restoring or having to recover failing drives.

Re:Great, Just Freaking Great.....

[stratjakt]

Make sure you ground yourself and handle the drives carefully when installing them.

Sounds like you're the type to kick the computer when you have a fight with your girlfriend (or mom?).

I dont believe you have 10+ year old 9 gig drives either, but I'm too tired to do a search to prove you wrong.

I like dirt cheap huge drives. I keep ghost images handy, and if a drive fails my system is back up and running within an hour or two. $1 a gig is much better than a 10 year old 3600 rpm 250 meg piece of crap. Heck RAID 1 would only be $2 a gig.

Besides, this technology can make drives more reliable. Ultra insane bit density means you have space to spare for redundancy.

Re:Great, Just Freaking Great.....

[Not The Real Me]

Seagate made 9 GB (Seagate lists them as 10.8 GB) drives in the early 90's. Seagate IDs them as ST410800N on their website and on the the hard drive, but when they boot up the SCSI bios reports them as being either SX910800N or SX410800N drives. I've got 5 of these drives, all running 24x7. 3 as additional storage on my Linux web server (primary storage are U160's) and 2 on a Win2K workstation.

Since you are clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed, I'll save you the time of Googling:
seagate.com/support/disc/specs/scsi/st410800n.html

You speaking of 10 year old 250 meg drives shows that you live in your mommy's basement and play with IDE drives. Now go back into your mommy's basement and watch some Star Trek, and when you're done with that you can play some games on your XBox console.

Re:Great, Just Freaking Great.....

[ivan256]

The first 5.25" 1GB hard drive was introduced in 1994 (9 years ago). Your 9GB drives are no older than 6-7 years. They are certainly not 10+ years old.

Any properly treated <= 10k RPM SCSI disk drive you get today will likely last just as long. Also, if it's still working after three years, it'll likely be working after six. You'll find almost all the defects in the first 18 months. It's should be no surprise that cheap IDE disks will be less reliable than the more expensive high quality SCSI disks. They're not just more expensive because of industry colusion. The extra quality costs more to manufacture. Considering that the upgrade cycle for x86 PCs has been less than 2 years for 5 years or so, can you blame the hard drive manufactures for being cheap when a very small percentage of their customers will care?

Re:Great, Just Freaking Great.....

[Not The Real Me]

You are wrong.

In 1991, Seagate was selling 3.1 GB, 5.25" full height SCSI drives, the ST43400N. I know because I still have 2 of them in production. 1 is on an experimental Linux server. The other is on a Win98 machine that I use to burn CD's.

Here's a link:
seagate.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?/scsi/st43400n .txt

Seagate was selling the 9 GB, 5.25" SCSI drives in 1993.

Before telling lies by fabricating history, make sure you get your facts straight.

We need solid-state HD's!

[Faeton]

We don't need more HD storage, realistically speaking. Unless you're doing some serious video editing/archiving the internet/archiving pr0n, the 180 gig HD's will do you just fine.

What we do need is faster access/read times, and an easy way to get that is a solidstate HD. Not a huge amount of storage, maybe about 5-10 gigs worth. Enough to hold the OS and commonly used apps. With RAM prices as low as they are now, where are these things?! I want nano-second access times, not miliseconds! Imagine booting your computer in 3 seconds. Now that would be progress.

Re:We need solid-state HD's!

[rtaylor]

With RAM prices as low as they are now, why don't you just shove 4GB of ram into your home computer and let the OS data-cache deal with it.

Nope, won't help your boot time -- but who reboots anymore? Laptops have uptimes measure in months -- even whey they're being carried around during the day.

Re:We need solid-state HD's!

[Mitchell Mebane]

Imagine booting your computer in 3 seconds. Now that would be progress.

Bah. My Commodore 64 was doing that 15 years ago. And it used ROM. I've never lost my copy of the C64 OS.

Re:We need solid-state HD's!

[Carl Drougge]

Imagine booting your computer in 3 seconds. Now that would be progress.

Progress? My Amiga did that in '92. A little 2.5" HD that spun up really fast, and about 2 secs for the OS to boot. More once you installed interesting stuff I admit, but still. (And like others have already said, even older computers did boot from solid state (ROM) faster than that.)

Re:We need solid-state HD's!

[ShooterNeo]

"the 180 gig HD's will do you just fine". Well, go join an anime divx sharing channel. Or fire up a p2p app for a few months. I know people who have over a terrabyte of divx anime movies, and have to burn new stuff onto dvds to keep up. Sure, right now it looks like 10 terrabytes would be enough to hold all the video you could watch (just like a few gigs can hold more text than you'll ever have time to read in your lifetime), but by that time uses for that much space should become apparent.

Re:We need solid-state HD's!

[7aco7om]

That 10 GB drive sounds reasonable enough, actually. Not far off from the price of your average first generation hard drive. To be honest, that is a very GOOD price compared to prices I was quoted by a commercial SSD manufacturer, BitMicros. They were quoting me a minimum of $20,000 dollars for one IDE drive. . . ONE DRIVE! I've seen other manufacturers, but these guys offer drives that match or surpass performance of normal HDDs. Other companies I've seen provide disks that put out only about four megabytes a second. The only benefit I see is access time performance. To me, low access times is only half the incentive for a SSD drive. I want a drive that can pack an S-ATA bus with data.

What about colorizing the bits?

[Anonvmous Coward]

I had a conversation a couple of days ago with a coworker about how to improve data density on CD's. One of the ideas I suggested was that instead of packing more bits onto the CD, why not colorize them? A red bit would mean one bit of data, yellow would mean another, and so on. That's just an example. It just seems like they could be putting more data on a disc by changing the way the bit is detected.

It strikes me that there MIGHT be a way to do this in the magnetic world, but I really am not well informed on this topic. Who knows, maybe it's already being done. Enlightening information would be appreciated.

I guess the real point of my post is that adding more density to the drives isn't the only way to increase storage.

Re:What about colorizing the bits?

[asparagus]

There was some reseach into using 8 shades of grey instead of burning pits into a CD. Each bit became a byte, essentially.

However, DVD-R already existed in larger sizes and had some sort of standard, so the tech flowed in that direction.

Optical storage is following the same path as hard drives, though. Increases in rotational capacity (52x CD-ROM's), information density (higher wavelengths/tighter tracks) and finally alternate methods of storing the data itself, such as your idea.

Re:What about colorizing the bits?

[alannon]

You can't do this for modern optical media because the size of the details of the media is close to the wavelengths of visible light itself. Once you get to that size, there IS no 'color', to speak of, since color is just the size of the wavelength itself. Conventional CD players use red or infrared lasers, I believe, which have a wide wavelength. DVD players on the other hand, use ultra-violet lasers, which have a much smaller wavelength and can be used to read finer details.

Re:Don't need it.

[harlequinSmurf]

While I know I'm rising to a troll, its early Monday morning and I would rather not be at work so I'll bite for something to do.

What about Joe Consumer who buys a new PC with one of these "you-dont-need-more-then-this" 2Gig drives in it.

Being a new comp it will come with an OEM install of winXP so as well as the usual XP bloat it will have the added OEM bloat as well. That should come up to between 1 and 1.2Gig.

Joe Consumers son Johny gets Diablo2 for his birthday/christmas/some-other-gift-giving-event but poor little Johny cant play it as it requires 1.5Gig for a full install. If you want to be able to play both single player and multiplayer.

Don't even think about any other software on the computer. Joe Consumers workplace will go out of business at the cost of having to pay your stupid $1000 tax as without larger drives they don't have the room to have windows and their required office software installed on the machine.

Your theory effectively puts the entire computer software and computer industries "up shit creek" as no-one in their right mind would pay $1000 to be able to install software. It also puts potentially thousands of small-medium businesses who are already struggling with MS stupic licence requirements out of business.

Ultimately if you travel it through to the likely conclusion you will put the entire US through abouther depression as millions are loosing their jobs due to their workplaces going out of business. Con-fucking-gratulations.

If we can't trust something completely understood.

[ArsonPerBuilding]

..I guess we can't trust gravity either. Time to rewrite textbooks and remove the word gravity, since apparently we can no longer trust it!

What about...

[Tuxinatorium]

Carbon nanotubes? Like fullerenes, except they're long cylenders instead of spherical. And they conduct electricity quite well.

Slow? So!

[DoraLives]

Maybe that says that we should be concentrating on fast solid state storage rather than trying to minimize the stuff we have now

At Terabytes per square INCH(!), I'll cheerfully put up with a little sluggishness in the new media, thank you very much.

Re:Slow? So!

[roothorick]

ACK! Please God no! Hard drives are not nearly as fast as we need them! I remember when I could load DooM in 2 seconds on a box that could barely manage 5fps in-game. Today, Unreal Tournament 2003 takes almost a minute to load, yet I regularly top 60fps. If there's one thing in computer technology that isn't growing fast enough, it's hard drive speed. I wanna be able to load UT2k3 in a matter of seconds, not minutes!

My 60GXP in my Tivo keeps on tickin'

[John Jorsett]

I don't know what all the fuss about the 60 GXP is about. I've had one running nonstop in my Tivo for 2.5 years with nary a problem. Of course those OTHER 3 I've replaced in my computers kind of ruin the averages ...

World-changing news!

[mcrbids]

Incremental developments in computer technology result in better, faster, cheaper products!

A lead researcher on the team is quoted as saying: "Yes, this means that current developmental trends will continue..." while another: "We really thought we'd reached the end, but, with this, we can continue revolutionizing the world just like we did last year!"

In other news, the sun is due to rise again tomorrow sometime in the morning....

Re:I hope IBM don't have anything to do with this.

[Jmstuckman]

After failure number 3, I gave up on sending my GXP back and bought a Seagate. No problems yet...

Re:I hope IBM don't have anything to do with this.

[flyonthewall]

I think that the hard drive manufacturers need to stop focusing on how big they can make drives, and to start focusing on ways to make drives more reliable. A 200 GB drive is useless if it dies after six months.

Why should they? All they need to do is ensure that the drives will last about 2 years, after that, the insatiable demands will have them putting out 500Gb and larger drives, relegating the 200s in the realm of obsolete.

Fluid Dynamic Bearings...and washingmachine drives

[skogs]

They are trying to make disks more reliable. Fluid dynamic bearings (FDB) don't wear out as easily as ball bearings. You know...that grinding sound that your disk makes as it spins up and searches for data...yeah that goes away with FDB.
I was just checking out a drive by western digital yesterday with FDB...a 160Gig unit. I think it was about a buck a gig, and I would assume much more reliable than my current lowly 30Gig and 20Gig drives...
ahhh...progress...

Hell, I remember being able to work on those REAL hard disk drives. You know, the cartridge ones. Roughly 15 inches in diameter...placed on a unit that stands up to your waist...with a reader arm as big around as my thumb that juts in and out like a pogostick....

Yeah, those were the days. Those drives are still usefull for the sake of basic electronics study though...makes it nice so that the students can see teh inner workings of a disk drive. I think they only stored like 8 Megabytes....maybe less. :) Sure beat tapes at least.

Big deal!

[andy@petdance.com]

Nickel sensors? We've had technology like this for years, at least since the early 80s.

Whenever I was at the arcade or Bugsy's Subs, and I lost my last man playing Berzerk, the machine would say "coin detected in pocket!" If we had working quarter sensors back in the 80s, then what's the big deal with nickel sensors now?

Girls

[SB5]

Girls have been saying this for years; Size doesn't matter. Anywho, what girls really want is reliability, at least that's what I have been told.

Then again, I'm slacking on that end, among others....

SSD != RAM

[Kjella]

Well, if you want 3 seconds boot time, you'll need flash ram, not standard RAM, as they lose the info when you power off. (And no, always-on or UPS is not a solution. The day you trip over the power cord to your machine, it'll be CLEARED). It's not so cheap (at least not on the order of gigabytes), and in fact you do need some. Even a standard popular game like NWN easily eat up 2gb alone.

As for corporate machines, they would probably rather boot their machines from a always-on server which can hold the most common programs in a ramdisk anyway, and simply take the penalty of loading them to ram from disk on the few occasions when the server reboots.

Kjella

This could be applied in other ways too

[zorander]

Now that we can have (massively?) increased storage capacity per square inch, shouldn't we start seeing hard disks in the 3.5" form factor that are really 4+ way RAID volumes with a builtin hardware driver to make it behave as a normal disk would? That way you'd get basically what you have now but MUCH more reliably and maybe even a little more capacity. (depending on the massiveness of the change this development can cause in size/data ratio)

Running a PC or a 1U web server on a single hard disk is making for an awfully large failure point if it dies--it's the least replaceable component cause of data loss and they die a lot. Introducing redundancy at this level could help a lot with that issue (and help high density multicomputer serving become more reliable and fault tolerant)

Brian

Backups...

[ForestGrump]

Yay! now i can backup all the porn on Kazaa....and still have room to spare!

Re:Backups...

[InadequateCamel]

If I had a nickel for everyone who said that today...

damm

[hugecrow]

I just got backups all over my keyboard...

Re: Useless

[Spiritd0g]

Quick, how does the hard drive you have now work? I believe you've answered your own question.

"Ballistic Magnetoresistance?"

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

"Ballistic Magnetoresistance?" I thought that was the resistance offered by the magnetic platters when I use my .45 to read-protect my drive from the FBI/BSA/MS.

Giant, Colossal... Ballistic?

[wirelessbuzzers]

This sounds like vaporware. It will never make it to the market: "ballistic magnetoresistance" just doesn't capture the imagination. Extraordinary magenetoresistance was a good start, but I'm looking for the next biggest thing in hard drive technology from either "bloody huge magnetoresistance" or "fucking enormous magnetoresistance" technologies.

Geez. They might as well have named it obese magnetoresistance. Ballistic my ass.

Re:I hope IBM don't have anything to do with this.

[djrogers]

In order for that to work, Joe sixpack is going to have to stop buying computersbased on (GB|MB|MHz)/$, and will have to stop buying hard drives at Fry's based on the biggest frive available under $129...

IBM, Seagate et. all sell to their markets - it'll be a while before priorities change.

OK mr Smarty pants

[Rhinobird]

How do we know those shorter wavelengths are there if we can't see them?

Coulombs

[SHEENmaster]

Tesla might've had his own measuerment, and it may very well be better. Different units are a bitch.

Re:Coulombs

[EggplantMan]

No, magnetic fields are measured in teslas. The coulomb is a measure of charge. The units are as follows:

T = N / (A * m) , or T = N / (C * m/s )

So no, that's utterly wrong. It is not even dimensionally correct.