The Future of Hard Drives: Ballistic Magnetoresist

Hirsto writes "Found this interesting story about breakthrough research on next generation drives. Here is a link to the NSF press release on this technology which supposedly enables storage densities of greater than 1 terabit per square inch. Devices might be on the market in 7 years, give or take."

Comments

How do they come up with this?

[adamofgreyskull]

Chopra said the ballistic electrons lead to clearer binary signals -- at least in part. However, "we don't fully understand how the signal is enhanced to such very large degrees," he said. "The existing theories don't yet explain it. There are some things here no one quite understands. That means there's a lot of science to be discovered yet."

Do they just try making bits smaller and smaller, and out of increasingly diverse kinds of materials until they find something that works or what? Serious question..

Mechanical drives vs. solid state storage

[chancegray]

Shouldn't we be moving over to some time of solid state storage devices soon? It seems like it would be a more reliable solution than all the moving parts in hard drives. Does anyone have some links on this?