Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
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?
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?
A recent discovery in polyester (yes, polyester, you disco baby) lubricants
THAT explains why people got so busy back in the 70s.
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 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.
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.
We have a winner ...
I, for one, welcome our new lubricated polyester overlords.
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.
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!
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
In the absence of growing markets (if tarrif wars were to isolate national economies from foreign trade for example) nobody could afford to build those billion dollar fabs, but we would still have advancing technology. So the OP got it half-right.
And of course the yet-undiscovered low-cost future technology has to exist. Fields outside electronics have had growing markets drive technological and capital investment, but they haven't advanced as fast.
But the laws of supply and demand only kick in when the supply is constrained. In the case of a non-constrained supply, then what happens is the manufacturer will set the price so that the (sell price - manufacturing cost) * units sold equals is maximized (maximum total profit). Then the manufacture will make as many as will sell at that price.
Now, in this case, there is another economic force at play. It is the laws of economy of scale. So, as demand increases, more will be manufactured, allowing cheaper production costs, which will allow the sell price to drop, assuming that a lower sell price will increase the "quantity demanded" at that demand level enought to cause enough more units to sell to create a higher profit.
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
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.
It is the actual platters that are made from a ceramic glass instead of metal. The glass has better thermal tolerance and is lighter and stronger than the previous metals used.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
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.
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.
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.