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

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Then how do we know they're there?

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

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?

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: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.

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.