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Nickel Sensors Could Raise Hard Disk Capacity

Posted by timothy on from the why-if-i-had-a-nickel-microsensor-for-every dept.

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."

22 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. Bloody hell. by caluml · · Score: 3, Funny

    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...

    --
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  2. Spin states by SirCrashALot · · Score: 4, Informative

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

  3. Is it wise ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful


    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 ?

    1. Re:Is it wise ? by TheSHAD0W · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Is it wise ? by swordgeek · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      --

      "People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
    3. Re:Is it wise ? by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 5, Funny
      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.

    4. Re:Is it wise ? by shogun · · Score: 4, Funny

      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.

  4. Huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    Then how do we know they're there?

    1. Re:Huh? by comptrav · · Score: 4, Informative

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

  5. Ballistic? by TheSHAD0W · · Score: 3, Funny

    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"!

    1. Re:Ballistic? by modecx · · Score: 3, Funny

      Our platters have gone plaid!

      --
      Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
  6. I hope IBM don't have anything to do with this... by Zog+The+Undeniable · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...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?

    --
    When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
  7. Advances in storage technology by Karamchand · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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!

    1. Re:Advances in storage technology by Cali+Thalen · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Chaos, panic, disorder...my work here is done.
  8. New HD technology! by apoc.famine · · Score: 4, Funny

    If I had a nickel for every time...

    --
    Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
  9. Of course by mccalli · · Score: 3, Funny
    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

  10. New sensation by Autonymous+Toaster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

    --
    Could I interest anyone in some toast?
  11. Cool.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    "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?

  12. What gets me.. by di0s · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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??

  13. Re:I hope IBM don't have anything to do with this. by Maul · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    --

    "You spoony bard!" -Tellah

  14. Great, Just Freaking Great..... by Not+The+Real+Me · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  15. We need solid-state HD's! by Faeton · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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.