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New Lubricant Leads To Faster Hard Drives
azav writes "We all know about Moore's Law as it applies to chip speed but little attention is publicly made to the challenges of increasing speed in hard drives. A recent discovery in polyester (yes, polyester, you disco baby) lubricants will allow for faster and longer lasting hard drives."
nyah
Lubricants and "Faster, Longer Lasting hard drives."
Sounds like some of the spam I get every day... cue all the bad jokes.
I am constantly bombarded about emails promising 'longer lasting hard drives' something about pills or herbs, this is nothing new.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Remember to always bring a towel
are we worried about speed when we can stripe 14 disks for no more than the cost of disks?
we can't do that inexpensively with cpus.
of this?
With this, my hard drive speed increased a lot, if you know what I mean, and I think you do!
However, I don't know about "longer lasting". I guess it depends on the person. Mine becomes a floppy after 2 minutes.
Slashdot pun gods, you may now begin!
What are you selling? Hard drives or sex jelly?
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
New lubricant leads to faster pr0n on hard drives...
</ducks>
Hard Drive Speed doesn't seem to be the problem... S-ATA suits me just fine.
What I really worry about is hard drives not getting any bigger. It seems progress has stopped at about 350 - 400gig and no prospect of going anywhere.
My laptop runs cool, except for the left palm rest, where the hard drive is inside the case. After a few hours of gaming, it can be VERY hot. Would better lube allow for portable drives to run cooler?
Boxing Equipment Reviews
"Hard". "Lubricant". "Faster". How the hell are the trolls supposed to twist this into a quick laugh? You guys are making it too difficult.
Far greater than faster drives, of course, would be drives with no moving parts.
No wear, faster transfer (no seek time!) and silent. Should this be the way research should be going?
Patriotism - the last resort of scoundrels.
The first twenty posts for this article should prove as valuable for marketing research of slashdot readership. You should be posting pornography, not links to tech articles. Yes, I'm kind of joking but kind of not.
Both my 4 months old Western Digital drives have started horrible loud high-pitch whine.
But will they make it to market before memory cards large enough and cheap enough to feasibly replace hard drives altogether do?
Art Schools Dietzilla
How long do you think it'll be before I start getting "natural Viagra" spam for this technology? And how much longer will it take for the spammers to realize that they're talking about an actual computer component and not anything phallic?
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Granted, I've not kept up on the intricate details of hard disk manufacture, but I recall that the drive heads were suspended above the physical media by a thin layer of air. Has that changed? What's the point of lubricating the disk surfaces if the heads don't touch them.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
While it's all very nice, the problem is easily ignored if one would just go for solid state HDs. Why is it so damn hard to come up with a simple system? I don't care if it's 5 1/4 device with 20gb at 200 euros. Think of the MASSIVE speed and reliability increases...
Hate me!
to install Leisure Suit Larry. The leisure suit jokes alone should make your hard drive spin faster than you ever thought possible.
Monstar L
This is not funny. We have very serious technology break-through, and you should not be laugh about "Hard drive", "lube-and-polyester, "etc."
I suggest you read Slashdot
S-ATA, P-ATA or one of the multiple SCSI interfaces, all are not maxed out until you put multiple disks (and in S-ATA that is impossible, by design, P-ATA just sucks at that and the only worth naming is SCSI, that was designed with that in mind). The issue is the mechanical speed. For a single disk, all interfaces are faster than the platters and heads can read or write sequentially. Think about heads that can move quicker from one place to another and disks that turn faster, thus allowing to have better peak speed and also better real speed (non continous reads or writes). Of course, that requires better mechanical parts to avoid problems like vibrations or head crashes. Maybe the new lubricant could help with that.
You may laugh, but I don't know when, I don't know how, but I am sure that eventually one day someone will somehow use this new technology for pornography...
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Last time I checked, SATA was a point to point link. One end the controller, the other end a disk. They solved the PATA problem by removing the the problem. If you want shared bus, you get SCSI, USB, FW...
The oddest materials pop up for load bearing duties.
"Felt bearings" have been used in the automotive industry for years.
Especially in rack and pinion steering system where lateral forces are not so high.
Lubricants for the felt material include oil and graphite powder, or run dry.
While more durable bearings such as needle roller, bronze sleeve, and teflon bushings, may be the preference of performance applications, ease of fitment, damping ability, and cost, still ensures felt bearings are used today, both in automotive and other industrial machinery. It is very possible, you have owned a car with one or moore felt bearings somewhere in the steering system.
The properties of synthetic material as a bearing surface have been used and far back as 1950's(and maybe beyond).
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
The polymer used in this application is a sterically hindered polyester. An ester is a carboxylic acid with some sort of organic group replacing the hydrogen (i.e., O=C-O-CH3 is the methyl ester moiety).
Bulky groups sterically hinder a molecule, making part of the molecule inaccessible. One very common application is the sterically hindered base, like triethylamine. A normal amine is NH3, but a triethyl amine is N(CH3)3. The effect is that the compound raises a solution's pH, but cannot react with other functional groups easily. This helps prevent side reactions / biproducts.
t-BOC is one type of a sterically hindered protective group. Generally, protecting groups are removed as one of the final steps in order to get the desired product. This polyester has steric hindrance that protects the ester bond. But the article didn't say how that was accomplished. Adamantanes are another type of bulky group used to sterically hinder a molecule.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
Fucking hell...the Slashdot editors have no respect for those with dirty minds. NONE!
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Boogie-Grease - made with bitchin' bad-ass polyester technology. Our Boogie-Grease will make your hard drive run longer and faster.
So don't come up "short and slow" in the server department and be the laughing stock of the tech lab. Buy Boogie-Grease Today!
P.S. Nerd chicks dig it!
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
That I am reading this right after I reinstalled a new harrdrive on my Notebook where after 2 1/2 years the IBM Travelstar died on me. So in in an other 2 1/2 years these drives will be available for my next replacement. Still I wish I had the option to at least raid 1 my laptop. Even it it does add weight and uses more battery.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Won't the heat of the hardrive heat the lube up? And if so, won't it smell bad?
inflatable
As with almost any new technology, the real benefit may come not in the originally intended manner, but through through other uses people find for the technology.
WD-40 was an accident, and the inventor was not trying to make a lubricant. Now we've got a lubricant, let's see what else we can do with it.
Complete an offer, get a free Orkut invite, Gmail invite, and a copy of The Core Media Player Pro, to boot!
and cheap, not in this decade i expect though...
Yes, every girlfriend loves a speedy hard drive! After all, it allows her to perform everyday computing tasks, such as finding the MS Word document she's looking for or installing a new version of Quicken.
This new lubricant will allow the the hard disk to go faster because it will form an interface between the moving parts and the part of the head that touches them. The smooth, slippery, evenly-coated moving parts will slide much more easily against the head, prolonging its life.
Really, this is one magnificent technological achievement.
And to think, all the comments I've read so far have been pornographic innuendos made by "+1, Funny"-hording neanderthals. But your post, on the other hand....
I just re-read it. nevermind....
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
Hmm. I've been using polyester based oils in my engines for a long time. So am I going to have to change my HDD oil every 3000 gigabytes or something?
http://www.momsanaladventure.com/
Please tell me you didn't put "KY JellY" and "Darl McBride" in the same paragraph.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
A recent discovery in polyester (yes, polyester, you disco baby) lubricants
THAT explains why people got so busy back in the 70s.
We're all sick fucks.
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
Could this be used on engines? I know that oil carries away heat, as well as lubricates, in internal combustion engines.
If they find a way of coating parts and use some kind of anti-freeze in vehicles, maybe internal combustion engines will last longer. Two strokes could make a come back.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
I've often wondered about the rate of evaporation on fluid-bearing HDs. Running at high temperatures, even the lowest level of evaporation will mean a loss of lubricant over the years. Even inside the semi-sealed chamber of the drive, each on-off cycle will mean that the drive exhales the evaporated lubricant and the cooling pattern of a turned-off drive will mean condensation of lubricant on the inside shell of the case.
Ball-bearings (well-designed ones at least) can last virtually forever. I wonder if the same can be said for fluid bearings?
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
It irritates me that every single technology advance appears to be used first to increase the "faster, bigger", and make ergonomics acceptible later.
Why not use such advances to make current hard drives more silent & cool running, and then ramp up the speed?
It makes me wonder what are the possible operating temperatures of this lubricant and how much of a viscosity difference we would see from the standards of today compared to this new lubricant that is added.
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
I want the one that comes in the lime green package with the gold chain for the cable.
I've been searchin for the chord I can't hear Ive been searchin for years Its somewhere inside But its well disguised
try enzyte
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
MRAM drives.
you can now get four digits into your date instead two.
With my hard drive luck, a year seems like a "longer lasting" drive. I've lost more hard drives in the last year than ever - Just being away on vacation (with the computers unplugged), I lost 2 hard drives! (not a complete loss, but the systems acted funny enough that I suspected total failure if I didn't replace the drives quickly)
One week of being off, for a drive that is not used 24x7, should not kill a drive. I've had drives sitting on a shelf for a year that still work fine. I should not need to setup a 3-drive RAID array simply to get the level of reliability we had a few years ago.
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
It is surprising how often improvements in our computer technology comes from relatively mundane sources. For example, much of the reason that Moore's Law has continued to hold is the way that the mechanical engineers have been able to constantly improve our ability to position things accurately. Masks and wafers must be positioned with astonishing (at least to me) accuracy relative to each other in order to allow creation of 90 nm features.
Billy "Wicked" Wilson when you really need him?
Yeah, Big Blue is about ready to give Darl his due....
And Big Blue is, um, BIG. Silly Darl, I hope your SCO health insurance covers rectal reconstuction.
Didn't IBM, now Hitachi, use some sort of glass coating on their laptop drives? Combined with that and the drop sensor (accelerometer which causes the drive to park the heads when it senses it's falling) they're supposed to be very tough little buggers (they're nothing like the deskstars, which were crap as we all know).
Please help metamoderate.
Hmm...
I get lots of blog spam like this.
I'll just stick to K-Y.
Polyester, lubricants, disco, faster and longer hard driving...?
John Kerry is a Joke!
We have a winner ...
I, for one, welcome our new lubricated polyester overlords.
...considering how big hard drives are getting....
They really do need to be faster and last longer..
Sheesh people, RTFLabel... From the label:
LUBRICATES Moving parts such as: Hinges Wheels Rollers Chains Gears
This is from a 10oz can label, located right under the Directions section. I know what you're saying about WD-40, but the lable advertises that it lubricates, thus why people consider it a lubricant.
But let's be realistic about time scales here. CF is not replacing harddrives next month or even next year. We are talking probably 5+ years until it is realisticly at the price level and capacity where it's a serious contender for most systems. In the interm, it would be nice to have better harddrives. It's a proven, widely used technology. Making it better is nothing but good.
Just because there is potentially something better some years off doesn't mean you want to stop working on what you've got now. Quantum computers stand to make current computers looks like abacuses. However, they won't be around for many years, if at all, so it's not like we want to pack up and stop working on current chip technology.
I too envision a future where one doesn't have RAM and disk, you have one permenant memory storage that holds everything, because it's more than fast enough. However I realise that such a ting is many years off. Even the next logical step, replacing mechanical drives with solid state ones, isn't happening for a few years at least.
Unfortunately, the only games that can be stored on the hard drive are Leisure Suit Larry and its sequels.
your womans will love your fore it! H/\rd d|sk lubr|c4nt only 4.95 come on man you ow it to her! Spin faster last longer! many satisfied people can be happy!
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
What in play here is the Law of Supply: the increase in supply without any corresponding increase in demand. The manufacturers of these devices have found ways to make them for less, which has the effect of increasing the quantity of them each is willing to produce at any given price point (that's what an increase in supply means). It is only an increase in supply that can allow for the quantity produced to increase and the price at which that quantity is produced to decrease.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
One time, I was doing a crossword.
DI_K
12. Can be floppy or hard.
Couldn't make this sort of thing up if I tried.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Poor man. Here, have some amateur lesbian porn. (No joke. Stuff's impossible to find, but there it is.)
Clearly not work-safe, of course.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Anti-virus software.
Fight Spammers!
Now I remember why I failed Chemistry.
I was grown in a test tube, you insensitive clod!
Huh?!?!
I have placed a total of _one_ "free ipod" messages in _one_ of my post.
How the heck is this mass spamming? Check the stupid referral IDs. Find _one_ other post of that has the same id.
This story title doesn't use those exact words, but surely getting four sexual innuendos in any sort of casual sentence is a worthy accomplishment.
Check out these solid state HD's.
I'm sure there'll come the time when spinning disks (either floppy or HD) will come to an end and become just pieces of junk in a museum - like vacuum tubes in electronics.
(And the sex looks like tons of fun - GB and BB couples could do that too, by the way, vibrators aren't just for the chicks.)
I don't see why hard drives aren't magnetically floated above their bearings. Put an induction motor in that baby and reduce your friction problems to a whole lot less. Heck, you can even get it fast enough that the platter will rip itself apart, and have very little friction. 100,000 RPM HDDs anybody? Or am I forgetting something fairly profound. Please, enlighten me.
"Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is living in a state of sin." -- John von Neumann
I always suspected the term "hard drive" was invented
It's not "hard drive" but "hard disk drive" or "hdd" if you prefer. The "hard disk" was only the platter you put into the "hard disk drive".
willy
Great too see all the KY Lubricant and anal jokes are a plenty in this post.
--- hows it taste mother f$#@er!!!
But I don't see how bearing lube is going to make hard drives last longer. Most every hard drive failure I've ever seen was due to seek failure in the read heads, not platters that stopped spinning.
I can imagine a magnetically floating CD-ROM drive though, since optical systems aren't (measurably) affected by magnetism.
click-clack, front and back. I'm not moving this car otherwise.
I'm too lazy to read the fucking article.
Did they mention Astrolube?
hah. who cares about my hard drive!
;)
what about the hard on?
when will they design a better lube for faster
and more sustained orgasms, and longer, thicker and harder erections? pesh!
i guess this is a "geeks world"
Back in the "old days" 10 years ago it was hard to get one of those drives because they COST 10 HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS IN TODAY'S CURRENCY. Gee, it's been a long time since I had a stif... hehehe no, I can't say it either.
"All you ever wanted to know about organic superlubricant, but were afraid to ask"
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
...while CD-rom is called "romppu", which has no meaning at all, but looks similar to the other two.
love slashdot. populate it. use it. abuse it. hate it. kill it. miss it. stop following links, they only kill servers.
I just blew all my mod points to downmod (over rated) some of the predictable and retarded "HUHAHAHAHA ASS LUBRICANT JELLY BUAHAHAHA"
...
If it's fucking obvious joke. If you see it already posted. If you don't even think it's too funny.
DON'T FUCKING POST IT!
It's a god damn drag to browse to third page to find some interesting posts because some 12 y/o misfits are given modpoints.
(Yes, I know I could just filter -gabillion funny, but many times it just happens that there are genuinely humorous posts I like to read.)
Not to thread-jack, but does anyone know where the myth comes from, that size does not matter? I'm just curious.
Informative? Geeeeez. At least not "Insightful".
No, the presence of a static magnetic field would do nothing to hinder the drive's ability to read and write. Hard drives read and write with time-varying EM fields, which are spectrally far from DC (static field). A coil of wire would only develop an interference current in the presence of another time-variant field.
The problem with magnetically floating the disc is that unless the disc has a PERFECT mass distribution, the platters would wobble and the thing would likely disintegrate.
It is a water displacer.... the 40th formula he tried...
Polyester is made from petrochemicals, this synthetic is also non-biodegradable, so it is inherently unsustainable on two counts. Making polyester uses large amounts of water for cooling, along with lubricants which can become a source of contamination. The processes is also very energy-hungry.
IM willing to live with a little less speed, and a little more ecology in my future computer thank-you.
Screw that. I want quantum to bring back the BigFoot in a modern incarnation. 5400RPM, multi-platter, never-fill-it-up goodness. I want multi-TB drives that will fit in the 3.5" spots in my standard case to store video. If I'm streaming 3 sets of HD video at 26Mbps each, thats still way under what current drives can pump, and is trivial on any modern attachment bus. Low speed is more likely to result in a quieter, cooler drive too.
We've been stuck in the 250-320GB range too long...I'm ready to see some really big drives out there. Mmmmm, two 2TB drives in a HDTivo. Makes my nipples hard just thinking about it.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
This idea of a 'suspended' disk that is spun with close to 0 friction, might not be so far fetched. Might still be a ways into the future. But, I seem to recall a popular-sciece type article once upon a time that was talking about levitation and superconductors. The jist of it was a layman's introduction to the principle that it's almost impossible to magnetically suspend something and have it be stable. . . UNLESS you use superconductor's.
Apparently you can get very stable suspension using superconductors. The only problem currently is, all known superconductors have to be kept very cold (like hundreds of degree's below 0F). But, I think there are materials researchers out there searching for 'high-temperature' superconductors. If they ever find any, then it might become practical to have a suspended disk with very high rotational velocity.
Locker-room "size" is the length of the flaccid penis, but sizes of erect penises vary less than sizes of flaccid penises. Besides, girth matters more for stimulatinG the various nerve centers in the vagina.
I think the reason why we're hitting the 350-400 GB limit is the fact current 3.5" hard drives are still using the 1/3-height form factor, the form factor pioneered by Conner Peripherals before they became part of Seagate some years ago.
If we were to accept 1/2-height form factor again (most system cases can accept 1/2-height 3.5" drives), we could probably put in as much as six disc platters per disk drive and push the storage capacity to 600 GB or higher. Thanks to today's disk drive technologies, the power consumption would probably be not much more than 1/3-height drives and the thanks to cooler-running drive motors, heat dissipation shouldn't be a major issue.
All this is well and good, but when they come out with a lubricant that's anti-viral and flavored, they'll REALLY have something.
the PhD advisor's name is Dr. Economy. When you think about it, that's really funny, because it means his name is Doctor James Economy, Doctor of Philosophy. which one is it? economy or philosophy?
I'm still trying to figure out how lubricant is going to help me golf better....oh, well. I suppose anything would help.
Everything I need to know about copyrights I learned from Slashdot.
I think I've discovered a new frontier of Karmawhoring. "+1 Porno"!
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca