Hitachi Goes Perpendicular

Nimrangul writes "Hitachi has recently announced perpendicular recording with their harddrives, allowing for 10 times the data storage on a disk, meaning 20 G microdrives are on their way as soon as 2007. Hitachi is so pleased with this technological development that it has broken into song." This is, without a doubt, the most surreal thing I've seen today. Flash Required.

Comments

If you can get high before you watch this

[SweetAndSourJesus]

I strongly recommend it.

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[HDlife]

...The creators certainly did!

mmmm, mmmm, Get perpendicular, mmmm, mmmm
(I just can't stop)

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[chris_eineke]

At this point I regret living on the bleeding edge with my Gentoo Linux 64-bit installation on an AMD Mobile Athlon64. It just can't handle Flash... too purty ;P

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[ZeroZen]

Need a mod option AWESOME

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[x_terminat_or_3]

Why can't it handle Flash? I'm on a RedHat missdistribution and still can watch Flash in my FireFox with the help of a little Google.

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[October_30th]

I don't think you can use a 32-bit Flash plugin in a Firefox compiled using 64-bit libraries...

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[ImaLamer]

It's true, being high does make this video so much better. I disagree that it's goatse for your ears.

I only wish it was an mp3 or even mp4 so I can watch it everytime I get high and so I can send it to my friends. If it wasn't flash I'd bet it would get passed around a lot faster. Hitachi has scored big time with the "groovy" factor, and if you've seen this you know how important groovy is.

Very well done. I would actually have that play when I woke up daily. It's sound and content brings my two favorite pastimes together.

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[taviso]

$ sudo emerge media-gfx/swftools
# non gentoo users: http://www.quiss.org/swftools/
$ wget http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/research/images/pr%2 0images/Get_Perpendicular.swf
$ swfextract --mp3 Get_Perpendicular.swf
$ xmms output.mp3

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[Taladar]

I am running the same (Gentoo AMD64 64-bit) and my Opera runs Flash fine. Perhaps you should use it instead of or as addition to your 64-bit compiled firefox.

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[NeedleSurfer]

yeah Linux is very easy to use and its desktop ready...

I just set my card to record the playback of my computer... and press record, duh! but that was too obvious I guess

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[strider44]

It's much easier to tell people to write in a couple of commands than it is to tell someone how to set their card to record the playback of the computer.

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because you're running a 32bit version of Opera with the 32bit Flash plugin. He is running a 64bit binary of Firefox, which can not use the 32bit plugin. If he used a 32bit Firefox, the Flash plugin would work for him too. I highly recomend you understand the technical issues before you engage in Opera fanboyism.

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[Ed Avis]

Now, why can't the last three commands be done using a pipe? (disregarding considerations of buffering - though I think there is some filter you can put in a pipeline to provide that)

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[Rich0]

I'm an AMD64 user you insensitive clod!

Seems to work fine though (filed on buzilla as 88478)...

(Actually, even x86 users need to ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" on their emerge...)

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[Anonymous Coward]

It's much easier to tell people to write in a couple of commands than it is to tell someone how to set their card to record the playback of the computer.

I think his point was that in Windows you can divert and record everything that is produced by your sound card with just a few mouse clicks. Hence the "Troll" rating.

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[Anonymous Coward]

In a post 9/11 society, even our bits are standing on end!!

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[Deliveranc3]

Corresponding windows assistance.
Click on the link thingie, then click the movie thingie.

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[Anonymous Coward]

And then someone sends you an IM, or another program generates a sound and oh, you get to start all over again.

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[TWX]

"Corresponding windows assistance. Click on the link thingie, then click the movie thingie."

That's odd, that's what I did on my Debian box and it worked too...

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[Anonymous Coward]

Vertical/Perpendicular recording will extend the superparamagnetic effect density limit from 200 Gbits/sq.in to an upper limit around 500 Gbit/sq.in., this will spell the end for ferromagnetic storage in the next decade.

The Thought of Extreme Bandwidth Recording to a Magnetic Disk Drive Storage is IMPOSSIBLE due to the physics of 2 Write Bit Flux Transversals for 1 Data Bit. In other words, a 50 percent bandwidth loss before starting for the maximum data transfer potential from ferromagnetic recording devices.

That's still a far cry from Atomic Holographic Storage density starting at 200 Tbits/sq.in ( 200,000 Gbits/sq.in. ) to an upper limit around 40,000 Tbits/cu.cm. ( 40,000,000 Gbits/cu.cm. ).

Many attempts by Toshiba and others to reach 1 Terabit/sq.in. have always resulted in their announcing DEFEAT to reach this goal. Atomic Holographic Storage STARTS at 200 Terabits/sq.in. and goes up.

And if you hit electrons with photons, there goes the data.

Future advances to magnetic storage will be pigeon holed to solid state circuitry which is expensive, energy hog, heat source and fixed memory.

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a FAR better link to this fine file:

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/research/images/pr %2 0images/Get_Perpendicular.swf

Enjoy!

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[Anonymous Coward]

Mind you, remove the gap that slashcode inserts...

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[NateTech]

Welcome to the bleeding edge. ;-)

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats clearly the clueless fart method the average window user would consider perfectly normal and probably the best way to get it done.

Dupe

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a dupe. The previous post was called "3D hard drives" or something like that.

Re:Dupe

[niteice]

No, the previous story was about the technology, this one is about it actually happening.

For Your Referencing Pleasure

[MrNonchalant]

For the clueless among us, it looks like they're trying (and sorta failing) to emulate Schoolhouse Rock.

Re:For Your Referencing Pleasure

[generalleoff]

Yea they did. But I think they did it just lame enough to be funny as hell :)

Re:For Your Referencing Pleasure

[fgl]

I forsee this propigating accross the internets,
I for one welcome our new Perpendicular Overlords.
Please dont hurt me.

Re:For Your Referencing Pleasure

[alanbs]

For the clueless among us, it looks like they're trying (and sorta failing) to emulate Schoolhouse Rock

Hey, if that is their strategy, good for them. I have had that song about how a bill becomes a law stuck in my head for 15 years.

Re:For Your Referencing Pleasure

[Seumas]

I'd hardly say that's failing. That was really well done. I loaded it up, expecting it to be stupid and hating it. Not only did I learn something (recalling the huge uninformed slashdot debate earlier in the week when the story first broke), but it was very amusing. Just enough tongue-in-cheek not to be condescending, but silly enough to be followed by total gits.

I'm not quite old enough for the Schoolhouse Rock stuff, but I've seen a few snips here and there (I'm not quite yet 30).

Re:For Your Referencing Pleasure

[mark-t]

It looks to me like they are satiring Schoolhouse Rock, and I'd say they succeeded quite well.

Re:For Your Referencing Pleasure

[C0rinthian]

I still havn't forgotten "Conjunction Junction"

Re:For Your Referencing Pleasure

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only did I learn something (recalling the huge uninformed slashdot debate earlier in the week when the story first broke), but it was very amusing. Just enough tongue-in-cheek not to be condescending, but silly enough to be followed by total gits.

Yeah, if I had a girlfriend I'd secretly replace our Berry White with this and ask her to get perpendicular.

Re:For Your Referencing Pleasure

[Seumas]

You mean horizontal, right?

Re:For Your Referencing Pleasure

[Surur]

I agree. Its amusing, informative and explains the benefits of the technology in terms consumers can understand (more songs on my mp3 player). It also provides a superficial explanation of the tech which even slashdotters can grasp ;)

Overall though reminds me of a Fark contest. Imagine if all the latest tech news was explained in this way.

Surur

Re:For Your Referencing Pleasure

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean horizontal, right?

No sir! I mean perpendicular! Being at right angles to the horizontal; vertical so we can both watch x-files.

Re:For Your Referencing Pleasure

[fdiskne1]

I still havn't forgotten "Conjunction Junction"

Symantec has that song in their on-hold rotation. No, I'm not joking.

Re:For Your Referencing Pleasure

[mysticgoat]

"Four legs good, two legs bet.... "

[What? Oh. Uh-huh, wrong cheer, huh?. Ok. Then how 'bout]

"I for one welcome our new Perpendicular Over...."

[What now? Oh its been done already? Aw, sh..ucks.]

"Never mind. :-}"

Thanks for the memory, Gilda

Re:For Your Referencing Pleasure

[Dystopian Rebel]

I would not call this a failure AT ALL.

I learned several dance moves.

Re:For Your Referencing Pleasure

[Tablizer]

[trying to emulate Schoolhouse Rock] Hey, if that is their strategy, good for them. I have had that song about how a bill becomes a law stuck in my head for 15 years.

My head has "Lolly Lolly Get your Adverbs Here" stuck in it. NPR once played a juiced-up version of it. Talking about a head trip....

Re:For Your Referencing Pleasure

[abszero]

"I'm not quite old enough for the Schoolhouse Rock stuff, but I've seen a few snips here and there (I'm not quite yet 30)."

You must have just midded it, becasue you're the perfect age. I'm 27, and I remember it perfectly.

Re:For Your Referencing Pleasure

[Nutria]

s/Berry/Barry/

Re:For Your Referencing Pleasure

[Nutria]

They were imitating, not satirizing.

Satire:
1. A composition, generally poetical, holding up vice or folly to reprobation; a keen or severe exposure of what in public or private morals deserves rebuke; an invective poem; as, the Satires of Juvenal.
[1913 Webster]

2. Keeness and severity of remark; caustic exposure to reprobation; trenchant wit; sarcasm.
[1913 Webster]

Syn: Lampoon; sarcasm; irony; ridicule; pasquinade; burlesque; wit; humor.
[1913 Webster] Satiric

Re:For Your Referencing Pleasure

[circusboy]

I remember a social studies class in high school where one of the questions was to write down the preamble of the consitution.

you could tell when everyone had gotten to that question, because from various parts of the room you would hear quiet humming.

remembering this, I can't understand why people have such difficulty creating educational material that is good AND entertaining. I grant you that in today's light some of the 'political rock' songs are more than a bit jingoistic, (e.g. "shot heard 'round the world,") but still the genius of being able to put the preamble of the US consitution to a hummable tune? amazing to this day really.

that song was funny as hell

[generalleoff]

I was waiting for this to be posted. I lerned this on betanews last night. I think that song was funny as hell. It will proly end up going down as one of them pop culture internet icons that enver die. Much like gostse.cx as somone already mentiond :)

Re:that song was funny as hell

[Morlark]

Hell, I found this three days ago. I'd almost given up hope that it would find its way to /.

Re:that song was funny as hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, I found this three days ago. I'd almost given up hope that it would find its way to /.

And just think, if you wait a few more days, it will be here again.

Re:that song was funny as hell

[Tablizer]

end up going down as one of them pop culture internet icons that enver die. Much like gostse.cx as somone already mentiond

Please, no Goatse Rock video. Please God, Nooooooooo!

Isnt this....

[Anonymous Coward]

a dupe?

Re:Isnt this....

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

No.

it lacked the fucking song and dance number.

HOLY FUCK WAS THAT CATCHY.

Re:Isnt this....

[Plaid Phantom]

HOLY FUCK WAS THAT CATCHY.

Get perpendiculaaaar!

NO! It won't go away!

Re:Isnt this....

[inu_maru]

At least there were no calamary involved...

Re:Oh God!

[slavemowgli]

You obviously don't check Newgrounds often. :)

Oh my

[StyxRiver]

Lord have mercy on our souls.... Disco Bits.... ::shudders:: I, for one, do not welcome our disco dancing bit overlords... And, don't forget kids, GET PERPENDICULAR!!!

Only one thing occurs to me right now...

[AaronBrethorst]

"There's a lot of flag-burners who have got too much freedom. I wanna make it legal for policemen to beat 'em, cuz there's limits to our liberties... At least I hope and pray that there, cuz those liberal freaks go too far..."

Yeah, that was pretty surreal, not Mini-Me-being-spanked-by-a-6-foot-tall-woman-on-VH 1 surreal, but more than enough for a drunken Friday night.

Re:Only one thing occurs to me right now...

[AaronBrethorst]

Apparently whoever modded me down is not a Simpsons fan... What a sad day.

Re:Only one thing occurs to me right now...

[aftk2]

"And I'll make Ted Kennedy pay...if he fights back, I'll say that he's gaaaayyy...."

"Now we can pass ALL SORTS of crazy laws!@#!"

Re:Only one thing occurs to me right now...

[AaronBrethorst]

We need another Vietnam to thin out their ranks a little.

In the post-9/11 world, ...

[chris_eineke]

In the post-9/11 world, all hard-drives are terroristicular. ;)

Re:In the post-9/11 world, ...

[Knnniggit]

For some reason I read that as "testicular."

This is not good.

Re:In the post-9/11 world, ...

[the eric conspiracy]

I for one welcome our new hard drive perpendicular terroristicular high storage density overlords.

Re:In the post-9/11 world, ...

[Anonymous Coward]

you fucking wanker, why don't you repeat the same fucking joke for the fifteenth time in this story alone? you are not funny. please remember that you are not funny, and if that's the closest you can come to humor then please, do us a favor and step in front of a train.

Re:In the post-9/11 world, ...

[Anonymous Coward]

For some reason I read that as "testicular."


That's the way president Bush would pronounce it.

Re:In the post-9/11 world, ...

[CarpetShark]

Yep, storage has never existed before, but it does now. In order to deal with this new threat, we must forget everything we've ever learned about the laws of computing.

In sovi..

[Tibe]

In sovi.. Ah screw it, in Soviet Russia they don't make weird crap like that.

Re:In sovi..

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, THEY make you go horizontal.

Re:In sovi..

[kasparov]

Have you seen Russian cartoons? Trust me, they make weird crap like that.

Re:In sovi..

[atomm1024]

In Soviet Russia, nobody gets perpendicular. Perpendicular hard drive gets YOU!

Re:In sovi..

[Anonymous Coward]

Chuberashka!

Whistle that!

[rasty]

Someone help me.. I'm positive I'll be whistling the song for the rest of the day...!

Good Grief...

[reddeno]

Between this and Don't Copy That Floppy, I'm not sure how much more I can take....

Nicholas

Re:Good Grief...

[thesatch]

a working link: http://www.archive.org/download/dontcopythatfloppy /dontcopythatfloppy.wmv

Re:Good Grief...

[Tibe]

From videogamestumpers.com

While I'm at it, here's the low-down on the actors. M.E. Hart, the engaging rapper had a gig on a television show "In Our Lives" but was soon cancelled after this video was made. I'm not going to pick on him because after reading his bio, he had a rough life in his childhood. Seriously. I'm sure this video didn't help. He's moved on and is now a lawyer in DC and speaks out against child abuse. As for Maria Allen and Jimmy Todd, I can't find anything on those two. I'm assuming that they have gone on to mediocrity or are currently working at Dunkin' Donuts. Interesting note is that James Todd is the real name of LL Cool J. Now why couldn't they have used him instead?

Re:Good Grief...

[cliveholloway]

Errr, troll. Hello mods?

Re:Good Grief...

[DigiShaman]

Interesting. I first, I thought he was one of the members of the band "Prodigy".

Re:Good Grief...

[hass]

That link didn't work for me. This one works. http://www.blogtelevision.net/p/Watch-Video-___1,2 ,,17773.html

Re:Good Grief...

[ppz003]

Wow... I didn't think I'd ever see that again. I had a high school teacher that made every class he taught watch it, that and "The Enemy Wind."

Come to think of it, I didn't ever want to see that again...

School House Rock

[SumDog]

Before you skip over this as a dupe, you need to check out the flash animation.

Damn this thing screams a nerd verion of school house rock!

Re:School House Rock

[Seumas]

All technical information should be conveyed this way! Seriously, can you imagine how well this would work to teach difficult concepts to people who are otherwise not entirely technical? Or, for that matter, for some of us industry insiders, too. No more thumbing through convoluted RFCs. Just load me up a flash animation with a funky beat!

*snicker*

I need my bits perpendicular so I can store more naked horizontals.

Re:School House Rock

[Seumas]

I propose that once these drives become standard, we start saying "oh shit - my bits fell over!" when our drives crash or data becomes corrupt.

You heard it here, first (I think)>

Re:School House Rock

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, can you imagine how well this would work to teach difficult concepts to people who are otherwise not entirely technical?

Yes, it would fail completely. I don't consider that to be working very well, but to each his own.

Re:School House Rock

[Igmuth]

You just caused me to picture a bit on a drive saying "I've fallen, and i can't get up!" Now someone needs to invent medialert braclets for you harddrive...

Re:School House Rock

[owlstead]

Before you skip over this as a dupe...

Too late, I already skipped over it!

Re:School House Rock

[kosmicki]

Medialert, priceless...

Re:School House Rock

[Tablizer]

All technical information should be conveyed this way! ... to teach difficult concepts to people who are....Just load me up a flash animation with a funky beat!

I was working on a song called "Don't Open That Attachment!", but couldn't find a usable word that rhymed with "attachment". The best I got was "Don't open that attachment, it might be full of hash mint!". Keep da day job, eh.

Re:School House Rock

[alset_tech]

All technical information should be conveyed this way! Seriously, can you imagine how well this would work to teach difficult concepts to people who are otherwise not entirely technical?

That's a great idea! I've been working on a cartoon paperclip to assist people when they write documents. He helps you format your docs through song. Imagine "Looks like you're writing a letter," sung to the tune of Perpendicular, only out of key and really loud. I'm thinking of calling him Clip-... whoops.

Re:School House Rock

[Anonymous Coward]

"Don't open your attachment, the one your 'friend' sent?"

Hm. No, you're right. It's pretty awful. I'll have no part of what emerges.

Re:School House Rock

[Mark_in_Brazil]

Seriously, can you imagine how well this would work to teach difficult concepts to people who are otherwise not entirely technical?

I'm not sure if you really think this is a good idea or not, but I can tell you it worked in this case.
I sent the link to a bunch of people. My mother, who is 63, wrote this after watching it:

THAT is amazing. I was glued, and I understood it.
And it was pretty and fun. I'll be sending it along.

So Hitachi's clip was good enough to keep a 63 year old woman who couldn't care less about the inner workings of her hard drive "glued," and she actually ended up learning from it.
There's one more thing: it's fun to watch, like the Schoolhouse Rock clips that at least partially inspired it. The horizontal bit that learns it has to go vertical looks a lot like the bill that was sitting on Capitol Hill on Saturday mornings when I was a kid. The tune is catchy enough that I didn't get tired of it, and I got a kick out of the bit backup singers with afros. I think this is the single coolest technology announcement I've ever seen. I've seen cooler technologies announced, and I've seen tech announcements with more detailed info, but this was the coolest announcement.
I find it amazing that somebody made all this effort, and made something this cool, to announce a technological advance that isn't even a product yet.

Re:School House Rock

[LeninZhiv]

Holy crap that's hilarious! I thought that IBM's films depicting the Legends of iSeries were funny, but this is just amazing to see coming from a giant corporate entity!

Re:School House Rock

[stratjakt]

Despite all the jokes, it really is probably the best way to keep the interest of someone who doesn't give a shit about high tech long enough to explain why they want their next drive to be a Hitachi.

No PHB is going to sit and read a whitepaper.

playstyle

[courseB]

perpendicular recording.. like chess or is it checkers?

Re:Oh God!

[corevps]

Also worth cruifying your years over http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/business/0,39020481,212 2414,00.htm IT Anthems

Do these people even read slashdot?

[ltbarcly]

Come on, this is an obvious dupe. The editors are truly asleep at the switch here.

Creators

[kushboy]

Anyone know who sings this?

Re:Creators

[afd8856]

Want some tapes? :-)

I thought it sounded a lot like some of Frank Zappa's tunes (look for Joe's Garage and Strictly Comercial).

OMFG

[najay]

I am speechless ....

Meow Mix the Sequel

[robotsrule]

This song will probaly stick in my head for weeks just like the "meow, meow, meow, meow" Meow Mix commercial jingle did. I am going to sacrifice a small hard drive as an act of contrition.

Re:Meow Mix the Sequel

[mangus_angus]

may you forever burn in some sort of hot microsoft infested pit....I haven't seen that in years and now it's back in my head louder than ever....I bow to your evil.

Re:Meow Mix the Sequel

[robotsrule]

(From memory, access time less than 100 milliseconds)

"I want chicken, I want liver, I want tuna, please deliver"

Does advertising work?

Re:Meow Mix the Sequel

[metalligoth]

There's a poor family I know that buys a lot of their food from ultra-discount stores like Big Lots. They got some Meow Mix for their cat and inside was a contest game piece. When opened, the game piece played a funny version of the Meow Mix song and it had a sound effect of applause.

Turned out they won the grand prize in a contest. Their cat would appear on the cover of a big time cat magazine and they'd get to fly out (I think it was LA they got to go to) to see it happen.

The only problem is that the contest had been over for months. It was too late to claim the prize. That's what happens when you buy food that's been on the shelf for years at Big Lots, folks.

Ah well, they got a fun toy at least. We all took turns playing with the game piece, which on the inside was just a simple electronic circuit on a AAA battery that played the Meow Mix theme (and clapped) on demand.

Re:Meow Mix the Sequel

[joNDoty]

I'd hate to ask what you sacrificed for the meow meow song.

Re:Meow Mix the Sequel

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget about the hamster dance too!

Re:Meow Mix the Sequel

[Anonymous Coward]

A math major I know taught me to say it like this:

I want liver, I want chicken; meow mix, meow mix, please de-chicken.

Marketing works

[nysus]

Hitachi (ah, see, I remembered the brand) has succeeded in getting everyone to believe that they are on the cutting edge of hard drive technology. While that may or may not be true, the key point is that perception is being largely disseminated by a cartoon and not hard data or facts. Interesting.

Re:Marketing works

[Maxiosu]

think about it - viral marketing at work.

we're all going to post this on our blogs/webpages and spam it out in forums/irc to laugh at hitachi... thus promoting their new technology

I, for one, welcome out new smarter than the average slashdotter overlords

Re:Marketing works

[Detritus]

Considering that Hitachi acquired IBM's hard disk drive operation, which is responsible for most of the advances in drive technology over the past 50 years, I think it's fair to consider them leaders in drive technology.

Re:Marketing works

[Anonymous Coward]

Insightful and informative, would be nice if you provided a link to news article which covered this acquisition.

Re:Marketing works

[KingSkippus]

This is pretty old news (C|Net, January 2003).

Re:Marketing works

[wcdw]

The reason IBM sold their drive manufacturing division to Hitachi was at least in part because they could not compete.

Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) was making superior drives -- and far better arrays than both IBM and EMC -- *before* the purchase.

So why did Hitachi buy? IIRC, it was because they were interested in some of the patents.

Re:Marketing works

[elgatozorbas]

Hitachi (ah, see, I remembered the brand) has succeeded in getting everyone to believe that they are on the cutting edge of hard drive technology. While that may or may not be true

How, 'may or may not be true'. You saw the bits, didn't you?!? Clearly this is true!

Re:Marketing works

[ErikZ]

They can turn a 300GB drive to a 3TB drive.

As far as I'm concerned, they're cutting edge.

Re:Marketing works

[Anonymous Coward]

I think most likely because they were interested in IBM' succesful product lines, although I do think the IBM technologies and patents play a role here.

Re:Marketing works

[Cloud K]

Somewhat similar to the Honda Change Something advertising campaign, which used almost exactly the same idea... "we're so proud of this, we broke into song and look at this really cute cartoon we did".

They have a copy of the advert they had on TV on their website. It's a very catchy cartoon song which managed to convince thousands of brits that Honda are these really cool engineers who love revolutionising things and are all-round really nice, cool guys. And then it made them walk into work every morning singing "hate something, change something make something betterrrrrrr!!". Very effective technique.

Re:Marketing works

[wcdw]

I guess you didn't read e.g. the article KingSkippus linked to. Dated 1/5/03, that article reads, in part:

IBM had lost more than $500 million over the last two years in the hard drive business, which is notoriously competitive and yields thin margins.

"successful product lines"?!? Like the Deskstar? ;)

I remember talking to some HDS folks (mostly field grunts and account reps) about the deal, and they seemed to think it was a good thing. But the substance of those conversations escapes me now.

Old age, ya know...

Re:Marketing works

[LegionX]

Todaaay tomorroow Toyota :)

Re:Marketing works

[Patik]

Yeah, but who outside of Slashdot readers knows that?

The point is that the cartoon can get the point across to a different type of audience, particularly the ones who want bigger and better MP3 players.

Re:Marketing works

[Anonymous Coward]

Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) was making superior drives -- and far better arrays than both IBM and EMC -- *before* the purchase.

So why did Hitachi buy? IIRC, it was because they were interested in some of the patents.

Duh. Like he or she said, IBM was responsible for most of the advances in drive technology over the past 50 years.

This does not mean IBM was necessarily great at manufacturing drives.

It does mean this division has done great research. This is exactly why it has many widely used (and non-trivial) patents. It is not surprising that it continues to be the leader in magnetic storage research.

Re:Marketing works

[Anonymous Coward]

...except that a 3TB drive is useless as the latency would eliminate the benefit of space, the price of the drive would be in the thousands of dollars, and one failed drive means 3 missing terabytes of data.

Re:Marketing works

[wcdw]

Duh. Like he or she said, IBM was responsible for most of the advances in drive technology over the past 50 years.

Oh yea, I forgot - nobody EVER got fired for buying IBM.

I love it how people can spray comments like "responsible for most of the advances in drive technology over the past 50 years" without ever doing any actual research on the subject.

Re:Marketing works

[castorr]

I never expected this to come out of Hitachi..but i completely see where Hitahci PR is going ahead with this. In fact Hitachi is also setting up international consumer centers over the world, and I can completely imagine such animations being played in the background for the non-techies... pretty sweet...

Re:Marketing works

[SacredNaCl]

Hitachi (ah, see, I remembered the brand) has succeeded in getting everyone to believe that they are on the cutting edge of hard drive technology. While that may or may not be true, the key point is that perception is being largely disseminated by a cartoon and not hard data or facts. Interesting.

Hop on over to Storage Review and get the facts. Yes, some of the Western Digital drives are a bit quicker and come out with newer stuff sooner. So they are technically usually #2 as far as bringing new features to the market. Hitachi is almost always either #2 or #1 in speed & seek in test, and usually #1 in low noise levels.

These drives used to be #1 in new technology, speed, and pretty much everything else back before the Deskstar fiasco on the 5 platter drives when IBM still ran the show. IBM sold it off to Hitachi but still retains 40% interest in it and probably shares brain power with them. The trend right now is Western Digital releases new stuff first, 1-3 months later the Hitachi version is out and it's quieter, equal or better in speed, and often cheaper. Every once in awhile Hitachi beats WD to the gate with bigger capacity but it doesn't happen very often. They are still in the top 2 in the field, and back when they were IBM's baby they were responsible for almost every major improvement in hard drive storage. The most important thing is that the end product is not just good, it's very good.

The areas where Hitachi shines are usually quietness, exceptional reliability, and speed per dollar. I've been happy with the purchases I've made from them & all 8MB cache drives carry a 3 year warranty.

They have some beautiful 7200 RPM drives that compared up against 10K Raptors are nearly a match for them. At least in IDE & SATA I've been happy with everything I've bought from them and have yet to have to RMA anything. They are almost completely silent, I have one other HD which is close in noise made by Samsung, but everything else is noticably louder.

Re:Marketing works

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work at a large disc drive company, we were talking about perpendicular recording almost 20 years ago when high capacity drives stored merely 100 megs.

I believe it when Newegg has them for sale, until then it is just more hype ware.

Re:Marketing works

[Detritus]

I love it how people can spray comments like "I love it how people can spray comments like "responsible for most of the advances in drive technology over the past 50 years" without ever doing any actual research on the subject." without ever doing any actual research on the subject.

Some of us do read books, and have been around long enough to have a good understanding of the history of computing. For a summary of IBM's work in storage technology, see here.

Simpler Explanation

[amigoro]

Here is a much simpler explanation.

All the song and dance for that?

Re:Simpler Explanation

[gl4ss]

never mind the explanation - the song rooocks :)

Patents

[The Amazing Fish Boy]

I wonder if they can patent "a method of using disco music to make bits 'get perpendicular.'" Maybe if they crimp the disk, afterwards.

Re:Patents

[BluhDeBluh]

You bastard. I was drinking some water while reading this, and now I've spilt water all over my lap (making it look like I've wet myself) and my keyboard.

Bastard!

break the stereotype...

[helioquake]

And you thought Japanese companies are humorless??

Whoa. It's groovy, dude.

people dont want big storage anymore

[Anonymous Coward]

they want reliability

unless you are a fan of gambling with losing 200+gb of data that will die in 1-3yrs and with the price of a tape backup drive that can handle that amount of data being so high why even bother

digital data storage is so unreliable (cd rot, hard drives that die, flash memory has limited writes, any magnetic media) its not worth putting the effort into it, i dont want to keep writing my dvd's/cd's every 3 years cos the cd dye is unstable or my drive is going to die, thats bollocks

perhaps the message is , if you have anything worth doing, dont rely on using a computer to achieve it

Re:people dont want big storage anymore

[omglolbah]

For a portable music player it is pretty useful.
Unless you want an ipod that takes your backup tapes that is :p

Data integrity and reliability over time isnt a problem with this use, nobody is going to notice if the device marks a few % of the drive as dead. And if the drive dies? Warranty is a neat concept.

It is only music you have on your computer anyway, no real harm done.

My two euro-cent anyway :p

Re:people dont want big storage anymore

[KingSkippus]

Just my anecdotal experience is that hard drives are bigger and more reliable these days than they were back in the days of those old clunkers. Especially when you take into consider the higher demands we're placing on them.

Amazing.

[mr_pollock]

Simply amazing. What will they think of next?

Re:Oh God!

[metlin]

Are you *kidding* me?

That was cool, catchy, geeky, original and quite imaginative, all at the same time.

I for one think it was really, really well done.

Get perpendicular...tra la la!

Jesus Christ

[brsmith4]

That's my new sig.

Re:Jesus Christ

[Ecio]

use it a sig but dont try to sing it to a girl you've just met....

Re:Jesus Christ

[balster neb]

I had the same idea, except that I've made mine a hyperlink.

I wonder how long it'll be before someone signs up in /. as Actuator Man.

Actuuuaaatorrr Maaaan!!!

Re:Jesus Christ

[Actuator Man]

About 54 minutes.

the perpendicular lifestyle...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm dancing! I'm dancing!

This was insanely clever. Will be a cult video within days... You have to admit it does educate...

AAAGH.....

[Create an Account]

It's...in my head... Disco... Please... For the love of God... Someone help me! AAAAA...

Interesting...

[ErikZ]

So, how much faster can they spin the drives now with this improvement?

The 15k drives use smaller platters so they can withstand the stress of the high RPMs.

So what if you make them even smaller. The 36.6GB HD can potentially go up to 366GB now, but I think people would be very interested in a drive with smaller platters that goes 30,000rpm and is still 36.6GB.

Re:Interesting...

[mrchaotica]

If the psychotic flash video is accurate, the bits are closer together. Wouldn't that mean the data could be read at a faster rate without increasing the rotational speed of the disk?

Re:Interesting...

[Ami Ganguli]

Presumably yes, but I believe drive performance is dominated by seek time, not transfer rate. If the disk is smaller and rotates faster, the head can make it to a random piece of data more quickly.

Re:Interesting...

[Seumas]

So, how much faster can they spin the drives now with this improvement?

Slower, actually. If you spin too fast (or bump the drive), the bits will fall over. And not just a few bits. You've seen dominoes, right?

(Yes, I'm being sarcastic. Knowing slashdot as I do, this has to be clarified).

Re:Interesting...

[inKubus]

Interesting that you say that. I was thinking, and a hard drive read head basically is a sensor that senses peaks in magnetism at a small level. So because at a given RPM the peaks will be coming at a much higher frequency because the changes are closer together.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

because of this, the data density goes 10X, so the data rate is 10X.

The rotational speed likely is likely limited by how fast the rest of the electronics can process these bits. Expects lots of signal processing in the analog and digital domains.

In a short summary, no likely to spin the drive faster. The parent should be modded down for lack of clue.

Re:Interesting...

[KingSkippus]

Maybe I'm just being dense (no pun intended), but if the density of the bits outpaces the read head's ability to keep up with the peaks, couldn't you just add another read head and have each one read every other bit?

Re:Interesting...

[G-funk]

That's the best post I've read in months.

Re:Interesting...

[ErikZ]

You believe drive performance is dominated by seek time, or you know drive performance is dominated by seek time?

Smaller disks=less area to cover to get to the data.

Faster spin time=less waiting for the data to come back under the head.

A drive that can only put out 60MB/s will put out 120MB/s if you can spin the platters twice as fast.

Put out a drive with smaller platters that can go 30,000RPM, you will have the best performing mechanical drive on the market.

So, is there a HD engineer in the house? 15,000RPM drives get pretty hot, are we able to go much faster? Or are we going to have to completely redesign them?

Re:Interesting...

[Cutterman]

Ever heard of interleave?

Re:Interesting...

[timeOday]

I believe drive performance is dominated by seek time, not transfer rate.

Well, that depends entirely on whether you're doing lots of little random access (server load, or booting up) or sustained read/writes (like video processing).

They're billing the initial market as microdrives, where access time shouldn't matter at all. For downloading lots of songs fast, or saving or uploading photos, what you need is high sustained speed. Seeking is infrequent, because media files are relatively big.

Re:Interesting...

[SuperQ]

most of the RPM limitations are due to the fact that the chips responsable for decoding the bit signals off the plattes can't keep up anymore. The reason they use 2.5" platters in the 15k RPM drives is because the bits on the outside of the platter are moving WAY too fast to make it worth the platter space.

Also for the reasons you mentioned.. but signal processing needs to get faster.

AFAIK, there were rumors going around about someone (maybe it was hitachi) working on 20k RPM drives.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have N bits of depth and the same linear spacing the effective RPM is increased by a factor of N.

i.e. 3 bit deep 10kPRM is the same as 1bit deep 30kRPM for the same linear spacing of the data.

Re:Interesting...

[d'fim]

The 15k drives use smaller platters because it tends to make the heads crash when the edge of the platter goes supersonic. Rumor has it that Hitachi was the last drive designer to figure out why 15k drives with 3.5" platters would fail even before they had gotten up to operating speed.

Re:Interesting...

[Andy Dodd]

Centipetal force isn't the only issue people have to contend with when things spin fast.

Vibration is also an issue - At 30k RPM, things have to be PERFECTLY balanced or the drive will vibrate itself to pieces.

Re:Interesting...

[WalksOnDirt]

"...platter goes supersonic."

Fifteen thousand RPM on a 3.5" drive looks like 156 miles per hour to me, unless I've miscalculated. Hardly supersonic.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent is correct. A 15k RPM drive's platter's outer rim only moves 156.25 mph. (See below)

3.5" x pi = 10.99557" circumference
NOTE: we can round to 11.0" without loss of precision
11" x (15,000 / min) = 165,000" / min
(165,000"/min) / (12"/1') = 13750' / min
(13750' / min) * (60 min/hr) = 825,000' / hr
(825,000'/hr) / (5280'/mile) = 156.25 miles / hr

Re:Interesting...

[Doppler00]

What about those of us who want higher storage capacity? I've always wondered why 5.25" form factor HDD are not made any more. I assume it has to do with rotational velocity somehow.

Re:Interesting...

[Fortran IV]

So, how much faster can they spin the drives now with this improvement?

Slower, actually. If you spin too fast (or bump the drive), the bits will fall over. And not just a few bits. You've seen dominoes, right?

Remember, the bits are facing the direction of rotation, so centripetal force would be pulling them sideways. They're far more sensitive to sudden acceleration or deceleration, so these drives will take several seconds to spin up to full speed, and a sudden power failure will make all the bits fall on their faces.

(I wonder--the bits that are reversed, do they face backward? A lot of people get nauseous if they face backward while moving.)

Re:Interesting...

[SpookyFish]

Ok, but get your car going 156, open the door and put your head a few microns from the pavement (best with someone else driving). I bet it'll sure look supersonic.

Re:Interesting...

[Piist]

15k drives use platters between 2.5 and 2.75 inches afaik, meaning a speed of 111-122 mph.

Superwha?

[Doc Ruby]

Am I glad IBM sold their "moribund" HD biz to Hitachi. Even when funk and disco were king & queen of the dancefloor, IBM never had the balls to rip off "I'm Just a Bill" to enlighten us on superparamagnetism.

Re:Superwha?

[CptNerd]

I wonder if, for the Japanese media, they made a "super-para-para-magnetism" version?

... no one's going to get that.

Cap.

Re:Superwha?

[Doc Ruby]

Well, I certainly don't - that's an "utrawha?" :).

Re:Superwha?

[CptNerd]

"Para para" is a kind of popular dance in Japan, spreading around the world. You can find out info here:

"Para para dance culture in Japan"

Yeah, it's a long way to go for a pun, but what the hey!

Cap.

Re:Superwha?

[codeman38]

Sad thing is, I did get it. And immediately groaned. :-p

Re:Superwha?

[CptNerd]

Then my work here is done!

^===^

Re:Oh God!

[hdparm]

Try this, then.

Without a doubt

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the best article i've ever seen in /.

1!, 2!, 3!, Kick it!!!

You got it buddy

[Anonymous Coward]

As I write this post, there are no other posts dealing with the technical details of this. There are no posts dealing with the implications of this development. Is this truly one of those "who cares" stories. 20GB. Nothing special.

On the other hand, if the technology allows us to multiply the capacity of $200 drives tenfold, then I might care. The thought of a 2 TB drive for a couple of hundred bucks makes me salivate. At this point, I could just store everything on one drive and back it up on another drive. I wouldn't have to think about what to delete to save drive space. On the other hand, trying to recover the 'good stuff' from a hard drive that has 'everything' is a pain. OK, so maybe I'm just a pack rat.

Re:You got it buddy

[Hast]

As I write this post, there are no other posts dealing with the technical details of this. There are no posts dealing with the implications of this development. Is this truly one of those "who cares" stories. 20GB. Nothing special.

On the other hand, if the technology allows us to multiply the capacity of $200 drives tenfold, then I might care. The thought of a 2 TB drive for a couple of hundred bucks makes me salivate

Sadly that wouldn't work as the bits stored on a 1.8" disk are a lot smaller than those stored on a normal disk. Because of this is is a lot easier to make them stand up on the disk without falling over. Also most larger desktop disks spin quite a lot faster (7200RPM or over) and if the bits are standing up they will fall down because of the centripetal fources.

If you think this post sounds like BS you could just read the article with the technical details from last week and get the facts.

Re:You got it buddy

[fbjon]

Yes, imagine if slashdot started using these drives. All the bits of comments continuously shoved on the drive would start drifting towards the edge of the platter, and the eventually fall off. You could never have more than 50 comments on one page, because the older ones would already have disappeared!

Well I'll be!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck Strongbad. *This* is what Flash was made for.

Get pe'pendicular !

[Anonymous Coward]

That is sooo funny :)

Get pe'pendicular,
Get pe'pendicular !

Get Perpendicular

[werewolf1031]

...make...

..it...

...stop...

Fantastic!

[JiffyJeff]

I for one, welcome our singing perpendicular magnetic disk overloards...

Perpendicular!

[kuzb]

How much do you want to bet the price of these drives will get perpendicular too?

Re:Perpendicular!

[xiaomonkey]

Or, alternatively, they could eventually sell the new drives at a price thats relatively close to that of their competitors and thus drive everyone else out of the hard drive market.

I mean just think if you could buy one drive that has 50gb of space from Maxtor, or you could pay something like 10% to 15% more and get a 500gb from Hitachi. I think most people would go for the bigger drive, even if they didn't need the space (the logic behind this is the same that causes people to by 3Ghz machines that are used just for word processing and web surfing)

I don't know, they could also make a killing just licensing the tech to other companies. Either way, it's Hitachi's call.....

Re:Perpendicular!

[timeOday]

I mean just think if you could buy one drive that has 50gb of space from Maxtor, or you could pay something like 10% to 15% more and get a 500gb from Hitachi.

IMHO this never happens. Economics combined with patents almost guarantees there are never sudden leaps in price/performance. Even if the new tech is much cheaper to make, why price it below what is necessary to beat the competition?

Re:Perpendicular!

[SamSim]

$50i for a new HDD? I doubt it.

Re:Perpendicular!

[xiaomonkey]

Lets see. Since this "never happens". You mean no company has ever monopolized a market? Either by what can be considered a natural monopoliy, i.e. they are just the best out there, or otherwise? Economics some magically prevents this from ever happening?

I want to live in the world you live in. It sounds like a nice place.

The Gunther version....

[d474]

Oooo, you touch my Perpen-dic-ular,
Mmmm, my superparamagnetisms...

Funtatsic!

[Jacer]

I felt like I was high wighout any drugs or side effects!!! Reminds me of school house rock, but it serves it's purpose. It explains a fairly complex concept to that the lay people can grasp it. Personally, I'll hold out for 30 gigs of flash memory. mmmm solid state.

is the opposite...

[Anoraknid the Sartor]

get laid....

and is that why it's so geeky?

Hitachi is now a content provider

[mr.mighty]

I'm looking forward to watching the Saturday morning cartoon, seeing the crappy movie based on it, and buying the merchandise.

He did look a little like SpongeBob.

...oh - my - goodness...

[Anonymous Coward]

...now *that* almost makes it worthwhile that i stayed up until four in the morning working tonight...

ROCK, ROCK ON!

Re:Oh God!

[Seumas]

Dude, your name is DarkHelmet. This shit was practically made JUST FOR YOU...

Re:Swiping links, are we?

[DarkTempes]

i think it's more that most slashdot geeks are also goons.

excepting myself, i've seen something awful devour too many souls to give in =)

Get Perpendicular

[inKubus]

In Post 9/11 America, the bits have to stand up straight or terror will win.

Marketing works if you have a poor memory

[bVork]

I only need one word to describe why I'll never buy Hitachi/IBM again:

Deathstar

Re:Marketing works if you have a poor memory

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm posting this from a machine with a Deskstar, you inconsiderate slob!

I have several Deskstars, and none have failed. Good power supplies and adequate cooling help.

Re:Marketing works if you have a poor memory

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not entirely sure, but I believe that the credit for the Deskstar goes entirely to IBM, and shares the Hitachi name only because of the JV.

I *do* know that HDS makes some of the nicest hardware I've ever seen (right down to the drives), and I would not hesitate to buy a Hitachi-manufactured (as opposed to labeled) drive.

For an example of how Hitachi gets it, see this page:

http://www.hds.com/products_services/storage_syste ms/enterprise_storage/

Re:Marketing works if you have a poor memory

[kabz]

No shit, do those so-called 'Deathstars' have a problem ?

I have a 9 Gig SCSI one that's never missed a beat. Kick-ass piece of hardware.

Is the cartoon accurate?

[boingyzain]

The cartoon was cute and all, but what I'm wondering is if its really accurate or not. Are bits really these square pieces on a platter? I always had the impression that they were magnetic grooves in the platter (thus why you dont put a magnet near it). I don't see how you could make grooves perpendicular, so I guess I'm wrong. I did RTFA, but it would be great to see a better explanation of it!

Re:Is the cartoon accurate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it is accurate. Cartoons NEVER lie!

Re:Is the cartoon accurate?

[pipingguy]

Maybe you're thinking of, uh, how do I pronounce this...tern table.

Re:Is the cartoon accurate?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sort of.

I believe the superparamagnetic effect involves recording bits on such small particles that some of them will flip polarity due to the ambient thermal energy - not because of the field effect of their neighbours (which are, after all, similarly small and weakly polarised). There are thermodynamic limits on information storage and transfer just like everything else, unfortunately. ;) Though the net effect would be simple randomness either way, so the real cause doesn't make a difference in the end.

Perpendicular recording gets around the problem simply by devoting more volume to each bit, down through the media layer - it's not somehow magically protecting each bit from the influence of its neighbours (in fact, in the perpendicular arrangement each bit is more closely packed with its neighbours - each pole is affected by two neighbouring poles, not just one). This is actually a given, since you are after all increasing the density of information in a physical space.

These were probably just technical oversimplifications for the cartoon, though they seem a bit regrettable. But then slight misinformation is part of the Schoolhouse Rock tradition. ;)

Corrections to my corrections are welcome.

Re:Is the cartoon accurate?

[mike.newton]

I think you're thinking of records. The magnetic bits on a hard drive platter are physical chunks of magnetic material. Yes, much like in the cartoon. Here's the required wikipedia article.

Microsoft not wanting to be left out

[Lomithrandel]

Has started a Longhorn jingle and signed the creators of south park to direct it.

Re:Microsoft not wanting to be left out

[Tablizer]

Performed by "Zippy the Clippy and the Monotone Monopolists".

Yep. Today slashdot, fark, etc, tomorrow...

[WoTG]

the other major news sites online and offline will all be talking about Hitachi's great technology to store 30 000 mp3's on the next ipod mini. A few bucks of marketing VERY well spent.

Double points for doing this with something so technical that most /.'s, never mind the general public, wouldn't be able to understand from a generic press release.

Soon you will upgrade size of you harddrive.

[JollyFinn]

In soviet russia hard-drives upgrades the size of YOU!

Re:Soon you will upgrade size of you harddrive.

[harryman100]

Wow, I'll cancel the subscription of P3N1S enlarging pills, and just move out there for a while. I never knew it would be so easy!

Re:Oh God!

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone create an mp3 or ogg off this yet, I want to download the song on my computer!

Finally, a solution

[Anonymous Coward]

We should require that all /. articles come with a flash 'toon. Finally, something that gets /.ers to RTFA

Re:Oh God!

[ggvaidya]

No, no, THIS is Goatse for the ears :)

...with some changes...

[lxt]

...yeah - "Oh My God! You Killed Kenny" becomes "Oh My God! You Killed Another Feature!"

Increasing platter thickness

[rockhome]

Will this increase power consumption significantly?

Any idea how much the platter needs to be thickened? Seems to me the added mass will require more power to spin, meaning more heat as well.

Or am I just nutty?

Re:Increasing platter thickness

[m00j]

Will this increase power consumption significantly? Any idea how much the platter needs to be thickened? Seems to me the added mass will require more power to spin, meaning more heat as well.

Well it will probably use more power at spinup, but keeping it spinning should not require any extra power. The only things that slow it down is the friction with the bearings and the friction with the air. Heat should not increase too much with thicker patters as the main source of heat is from the friction between the air and the platter. This should not change too much since the platter is only slightly thicker - only that little bit of extra edge in surface area. Nowhere near as hot as adding an extra platter (like they have done on some of the larger hard drives out there).

Surreal?

[GrouchoMarx]

This is, without a doubt, the most surreal thing I've seen today.

And that's saying something. :-)

(Seriously, though, that's actually a very good use of Flash. Now if only all Flash commercials were that cool.)

Download link

[roskakori]

I just had to get this crap on my hard disk. Here's the direct download link: Get_Perpendicular.swf. A cool feature about flash movies is that they scale to the screen resolution, so you can watch it full screen. (The original web page specifies an absolute size.)

Talk about Microdrives - what about normal drives?

[LiquidCoooled]

We have around 300g drives at the moment, does this nice 10x improvement mean we will see 3tb drives soon?

direct link to movie here

[Dtyst]

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/research/images/pr%2 0images/Get_Perpendicular.swf easier, for your download needs.... :)

Re:direct link to movie here

[Dtyst]

sorry, here's a working link:
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/research/images/pr%2 0images/Get_Perpendicular.swf

Mirror

[smoker2]

Here's a mirror of the flash file. Works best by downloading the file, then playing.

Spinning Media...are they on drugs?

[itsthebin]

20 gig rotating storage? or 20gig CF card? I know which one I would prefer in my mobile device. And prices are falling fast - my 1gig CF card in my axim will be replaced with a 4gig in the next couple of months... I shall not even be thinking about putting a microdrive in it.

Future advancements:

[RoyIreson]

Atkins diet for bits 5 Minute Bits (video and DVD)

perpendicular bits

[hachete]

Just *how* do they get the bits to go perpendicular? The cartoon doesn't really tell me :-)

Re:perpendicular bits

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it can be a little tricky.

I'll be a bit technical now, so don't worry if you have trouble keeping up:

It was the disco ball. It flashed, they danced, and they were all, like... perpendicular. It was like, totally cool.

There. You might be able to get a dumbed down version of that on Wikipedia, but that's pretty much the gist of it.

Re:Oh God!

[G-funk]

I love that fat guy, he rocks :)

In a horrible, car-wreck-eqsque "glad it's not me" kinda way... Like the starwars kid.

direct swf

[cliveholloway]

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/research/images/pr%2 0images/Get_Perpendicular.swf

Please, take drugs b4 - I only had beer, but hey, it nearly worked. I recommend mushrooms.

cLive ;-)

Re:direct swf

[Anonymous Coward]

I get a 404 with that.

Awesome!

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel a sudden urge to buy Hitatchi stock for some bizarre reason.

Bigger is better... maybe

[JohnnyNoSPAM]

Larger and/or more efficient storage is nice. For me, however, hard drives are large enough for my purpses. I am more interested *faster* storage. Imagine if a hard drive could be accessed as quickly as RAM.

Re:Bigger is better... maybe

[David Horn]

Hard drives aren't big enough for me. You ever tried working with more than an hour or so of uncompressed DV footage? Runs at nearly 1GB/minute, and if you have to edit it, you need yet another drive to dump the finished product on to if it's not going back to the camera. Modern drives are fast enough for what I want to do with them - roll on 1TB and above!

Re:Bigger is better... maybe

[Taladar]

RAM as persistent as Harddrives is closer to your needs.

Re:Bigger is better... maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

DV footage is by definition compressed, about 1 gig per five minutes. You mean uncompressed SD (standard definition) footage, which has that higher data rate. Only Digibeta cameras capture uncompressed SD video, and even then there's a 2:1 lossless data compression scheme used on the storage end.

Re:Bigger is better... maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

amen brother,

I work with miniDV all the time and I yearn for multiple TB's or at least 1 so I don't have to worry about being low on space all the time on my seriously messy 160gb of disk space.

If not...

[elgatozorbas]

you will be afterwards.

Been there, done that....

[Rixel]

My boss has been calling me and demanding I get Perpendicular for years....and my memory hasn't improved one bit.

It's a

[Anonymous Coward]

Dupe

It doesn't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Already tried it, with my girlfriend I mean. It didn't work as advertised, so we switched back to horizontal.

ObSimpsons

[dangitman]

bit: But why can't we just make a law against horizontal bits?

Hitachi: Because that law would be against the laws of physics. But if we changed the laws of physics...

bit: Then we could make all sorts of crazy hard-drives!

Hitachi: Now you're catching on!

bit: What if people say you're not good enough to be in the laws of physics?

Hitachi: Then I'll crush all opposition to me, and I'll make Isaac Newton pay. If he fights back, I'll say that he's gay.

Re:ObSimpsons

[nokahnwud]

Best thing I've seen in ages, dangitman. Had me snickering furiously for a few minutes at least.

...and I thought the MVC song was geeky!

[Col Bat Guano]

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/3533

Re:Oh God!

[lintux]

I guess you haven't heard the Free Software Song so far? :-)

That was a lot like ...

[surfcow]

... bad drugs. Real bad drugs.

Some twisted creature wrote that. They can vote. And they might have kids.

I'm moving to Canada.

They've 6 GB Microdrives today, why not 60GB 2007?

[Anonymous Coward]

They've 6 GB Microdrives today, and if Hitachi has 10x more space to get, why not 60GB in 2007 and not this paltry 20 GB? That's only 3x, not 10x. That's barely better than a Moore's Law type gain, and for disks, that's not that good at all.

30,000 songs? =D

[An Ominous Cow Erred]

Aside from the obvious silliness, this animation mentions that the new microdrives will be able to store 30,000 songs!

I imagine some people out there have 30,000 songs, but I highly doubt legally.

The RIAA thinks $1 a song isn't enough, and want to charge $2 or more a song... but for a second let's assume that the $1/song price stays. That's still $30,000! Who's going to pay that much for their music?

Hitachi obviously is encouraging piracy here. =D Would be cool if they took on the RIAA head on. =3

Re:30,000 songs? =D

[dreamer-of-rules]

There is a fair amount of free music out there. Some of it is really good too.

Re:30,000 songs? =D

[An Ominous Cow Erred]

To be fair, yes, there is. =3 It would definitely be cool if more and more music on people's players was open-license music.

That said, somehow I don't think that's what they're talking about here. ^^;

( And wow I got modded Troll =D )

The ringtone...

[Anonymous Coward]

I want the hard-trance remix for my phone!

I pity the poor soul...

[alex_ware]

... who thinks rotationg his ipod/hdd will make it store more songs.

ROFL

[LucBorg]

AHAHAHAAaaaa this is funny!! Get perpendicular....

That was so Fxxking Cool!

[tekrat]

OMG! That was the best thing I've seen in weeks! Firstly, that took some time to come up with and it really works to explain the whole thing.

It was done with humor, decent music and good animation -- in short, Schoolhouse Rock style and it works!

How do I get that on tape to show other people?

Re:That was so Fxxking Cool!

[shoolz]

(First off everybody, stop laughing about VHS... I put training videos on VHS tapes all the time for clients who don't have sound cards in their comps, and don't have DVD players.)

To get it on a VHS tape:
Find a cheap video card that has RCA output, hook the RCA cables from the video card to your VCR, insert a tape and press record, then play the Flash movie on your compy. (If your lucky, your video card will have a nice utility specifically for transferring to VHS)

I'm sure you can find better/cheaper, but here'e one going on ebay for $17 http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&cate gory=40158&item=5182844589&rd=1

No transfer improvement

[kaiwai]

There will no substantial speed improvement in relation to data transfer HOWEVER what will benefit is the seek time, thus giving the average user the apparence that their computer is running faster, when in reality, the time it takes for the machine to find the software and load it, is a lot smaller. With that being said, I've always wondered what people fill their hard disk with, considering that even I struggle to my 160gig hard disk (and 40gig hard disk residing on my server).

Re:No transfer improvement

[acid_andy]

Get a TV card and the DivX codec and wonder no more! I always tell myself I'm gonna compress the films (movies) and program(me)s further later and burn 'em to CD or save up for a DVD writer ... or delete 'em when I've watched 'em, but I never do and all my hard drives are almost always 90% full or worse. I don't want a 20GB microdrive but give me a 2TB hard drive any day! I also wish motherboards would start supporting the higher RAID levels (was it 5 or 6 that used hamming codes providing both redundancy and improved performance?).

Re:No transfer improvement

[elucubra]

You got it! (All backwards, but you got it).

How in hell is it going to reduce seek? if the rotational speed, arm speed, and disc diameter are the same, seek will remain identical. The bits under the head being closer will allow for higher transfer rates...

Re:No transfer improvement

[Kagami001]

With that being said, I've always wondered what people fill their hard disk with

Sounds like a question for a Slashdot poll, if it hasn't been one already.
Personally, I take up an awful lot of space with VMWare virtual machine files.

Re:They've 6 GB Microdrives today, why not 60GB 20

[Anonymous Coward]

because they want to make as much money as possible. if they'd release the 60Gb drives immediately, everybody would buy it and nobody would be needing a new player anytime soon. sure, they'd sell a lot of drives at first, but the sales would just drop afterwards. the world just doesn't need 60Gb microdrives yet

Direct Link (right click save as...)

[johnny6vasquez]

SWF File

Re:Oh God!

[Anonymous Coward]

Goatse for the eyes and ears

you want surreal?

[jcomeau_ictx]

I just got this in my email last night: http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2666529. It's a short movie (about a half hour long) inspired by Daniel Quinn's books, and it's fucking great. And free (helps to have broadband though...)

That's OK, mod me offtopic... I did try submitting this as a story but don't have much hope...

Kudos to Hitachi

[lordperditor]

Kudos to Hitachi, that was cool.

*shuffles off humming*

Get perpendicular... yeah baby

Yeah!

[sugapablo]

That was just too cool. A commercial I enjoyed watching.

Other companies should take lessons. At least try to entrtain me if you wish to market to me.

Re:Yep. Today slashdot, fark, etc, tomorrow...

[mithras the prophet]

Yep. Today slashdot, fark, etc, tomorrow...

And as with so many Slashdot stories, yesterday, Engadget...

I'm Just a Bill

[Botia]

Anyone remember "I'm Just a Bill" from Schoolhouse Rock?

Get perpendicular...

[brainnolo]

Get more particular!

But really, who over 12 years could ever think this is a serious thing? I mean it is an hard disk not a toy. I understand that music player may be especially common between teenager, but this thing will make people think it is some sort of toy for babies.

Okay...That is hillarious =D

[localRoast]

I cannot wait for the competition to break out with their flash promos....LOL

It is VERY Schoolhouse Rock...

[cnelzie]

When I first say that bit, laying on his back, I half expected him to start singing about how he was "a bill on a hill"...

Very awesome.

I'm perpindicular right now.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you know what I mean.

~~~

The young kids

[jimbolaya]

It's already the rage with the young kids. My 17 months son watched the whole thing through, and clapped along with the applause at the end (so cute! He's going to be geek, just like daddy!). If that's not proof positive that Hitachi is on to something, I don't know what is.

Re:Oh God!

[Saeger]

Well I for one found this flash video *very* unprofessional and uncorporate-like.

I will be selling all of my shares at once! There is no place for humanity in a *serious* corporation!

Old Technology

[McGregorMortis]

Somewhere I have a magazine from when I was in high-school in the 80's that talks about the coming technology of Perpendicular Recording. BYTE or Popular Science or something like that. Man, that's a long gestation period... Around the same time, people were also talking about holographic storage on crystals. I think "bubble memory" has come and gone, but hopefully the data crystals are still on the way.

Re:Old Technology

[cwerdna]

Yeah, I remember hearing about vertical/perpendicular recording on TV >10 years ago (I think a Seagate exec was talking about it at the time). It's strange that it's come to light again. Maybe it was still all experimental all this time.

I dug around and found these articles on it from a few years ago:
http://www.internetnews.com/storage/print.ph p/1501 631
http://www.my-esm.com/showArticle.jhtml?artic leID= 14704826

I enjoyed that immensely

[Nicky G]

Well, that was just about the funniest thing I've seen so far this year. That makes me pretty lame I guess, right? In any case, I'm doing it -- I think I'm going to cut off the cable. No way they'll ever show content this quality on cable.

Interesting write head

[Thagg]

People have been talking about perpendicular recording for 20 years, and if I recall correctly the big problem with all previous attempts was ensuring alignment between the heads. Previous attempts used a head on either side of the medium, and keeping those within micron tolerances would be well-nigh impossible.

Hitachi has a very small head writing the data, then the magnetic field lines diffuse through the medium, coming back out the same side in a much larger area that won't flip the bits at that point. Clever.

Thad Beier

im confused

[pixelite]

it looks to me that when the bits are perpendicular they make the rings wider. Does having the bits perpendicular allow for such a higher density that is compensates for the loss of the rings around the platter?

this:
n-sn-sn-s
n-sn-sn-s
n-sn-sn-s

as opposed to this:
NNNNNNNNNN
||||||||||||||
SSSSSSSSSS

Re:im confused

[Poverty P'uh]

No, there's a third dimension, silly. All the bits used to be lain out flat as in your first diagram.Now they are standing on one end, like dominoes. Less area.

This gets the palm of bad taste

[MerlinTheWizard]

I'll never buy an Hitachi drive again. ;-)

Since they already went perpendicular...

[Anonymous Coward]

...(as the last Slashdot article stated), they must have gone straight again. Guess it didn't work out so well.

That was the coolest thing since "Work It"

[SFSouthpaw]

Link for those who haven't seen it.

Noooo...

[Andy Dodd]

One song I can't get out of my head is bad enough.

TWO???

BASTARD!

Um, no.

[Andy Dodd]

It will take more energy to get it spinning initially, but once it's spinning, added mass has NO effect on how much energy is needed to keep something spinning.

Air resistance and other forms of friction are the dominant forces. (Although bearing friction will increase somewhat with heavier platters...)

Re:Oh God!

[fmobus]

Get perpendicular...tra la la!
This sounds like the next slashdot meme.
Fantastic. And perpendicular. Except in Nebraska.

Holy Crap!!!

[ariel5000]

It's the geek Conjunction Junction!! Awesome.

Faulkner Bits

[crypto55]

Actually, the bits should slant at 45 degree angle. This will allow them to run across the ground, but also to move straight up and down. It is important that they can straddle the slant between electromagnetic fields and words.

An interesting movement

[pakog]

well i can understand why they made a song about it, its not everyday that something just suddenly sticks straight up. Well on second thought, i guess it depends on the gender, and uh, age of the person in question.

My name is...

[GeekDork]

My name is Troy McClure. You know me from movies such as "Blue Rays do it in High Density" or "When Magnetism Becomes Gigantic".

technical manga

[RotJ]

In Japan, a lot of product manuals, corporate PR documents, and government documents are published in manga form. Morita Akio, co-founder of Sony onced asked his young female skiing instructor if she had read his autobiography Made in Japan. She told him "no, but I would have read it if it was a manga." So he had an artist adapt his book into manga form, naturally.

The informational manga genre was mostly spurred by the publication of A Manga Introduction to the Japanese Economy and A Manga History of Japan (Manga Nihon-no-Rekishi in the 1980s.

Re:technical manga

[Carrion Creeper]

The US Army also puts out a ?monthly preventative maintenace publication in cartoon form. It was kinda crazy to see their sound weapons in cartoon form and wonder if they really did exist. Pretty sure they do.

137 GB Hurdle

[merreborn]

The previous article's comments included a completely erroneous post re: OS limitations on drive capacity, modded 5, informitive. The current OS based hurdle is 28-bit LBA. This means a maximum of 2^28 (27?) 512 byte sectors, for a total of 137 gig of addressable drive space.

48-Bit LBA went mainstream somewhere around '02, so on older hardware it's a crapshoot. The only windows versions that support it are XP and 2K with a service pack, and then only after adding a special key to the registry.

48-bit LBA should support up to about 137,000 TB, if my math is any good.

Two Words..

[shplorb]

MR SPARKLE!!!!!!

I've already gone "PERPENDICULAR"

[Anonymous Coward]

...just contemplating the 10-fold increase in pr0n storage.

Don't influence the HDDs

[DarkMorph]

So long as the hard drives themselves don't start singing..

Link to iTMS

[kiddailey]

If you didn't know already, here's a link to the song (Dragostea Din Tei, by O-Zone) in the iTunes Music Store

Re:Link to iTMS

[zakezuke]

Wikipedia has links to music and such. Among the missing is my favorite nouma feujcity.

Re:Link to iTMS

[kiddailey]

lol - great link, thanks!

If you're a digital pack-rat like me...

[kiddailey]

Here's a direct link to the SWF for archival purposes.

Thank goodness they've come up with a way to make HDs store more data!

The way that "bit" character was presented..

[Peter Cooper]

.. was somewhat like the way the "bill" character was presented in the Simpsons episode where Lisa was trying to get some bill approved/disapproved in Washington.

It was something to do with spoofing a campy 70's political cartoon. Were these cartoons real? Where do I recognize this style from? The "bit" in this video seemed familiar in terms of style.

Re:The way that "bit" character was presented..

[bani]

Those cartoons were real indeed. If you grew up in the early 70's - 80's you would remember them clearly.

Re:The way that "bit" character was presented..

[Peter Cooper]

Ah, I'm not from the United States, but we get a little media 'leakage' of things like this, which is why I wasn't entirely familiar. Thanks though. This looks great!

As your body grows bigger...

[IdJit]

Hey, Schoolhouse Rock worked wonders for me when I was learning my multiplication tables. And the preamble to the Constitution? Fuhggedaboutit...I can't recite it without singing it.

Personally, I'd love to see the folks who did the original Schoolhouse Rock make a comeback and do some new songs!

Short version

[steveoc]

Thats a lot of bandwidth to convey a simple message.

Here is the short version :

I can fit 1 girl laying down in my bed.

If I got chicks to stand up instead, I could fit 10 in the bed at the same time.

woohoo !

speed improvment as a by-product?

[Anonymous Coward]

am I naive in thinking that as the bits are closer together then they'll be read faster too?

or would the head need to pass by slower to read
the magnetism? when do we reach the maximum mag rate now?

Obligatory Red Dwarf quote

[Quietust]

No need to get high - alcohol should work just as well:

LISTER: I'm not gonna get plastered, Rimmer, just ... just nicely drunk.
RIMMER: Define "nicely drunk." Is "nicely drunk" horizontal or perpendicular?

Re:Oh God!

[Anonymous Coward]

now jus think about the poor idjits who had to lower themselves an record that crap.

UC5608DWP

[Cmdr TECO]

The chips that are briefly visible in the zoom at the beginning and end of the animation are actually real and appropriate to the context.

UC5608DWP -- LOWER CAPACITANCE 18-LINE 5V SE TERMINATOR FOR SCSI AND FAST SCSI.

We all needed to know this.

You're very welcome.

so where's the 7K500?

[jab]

Maybe the Hitachi folks should stop singing and concentrate on shipping. On January 10 Hitachi announced the 500GB 7K500 drive would ship "first quarter 2005". It is now mid April, where is it?

Question: "Get on my" WHAT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Near the end of the song, does the talking hard disk change what he's saying and begin to say "Get on my dick-ular"????

Seriously. I heard it twice.

Re:Oh God!

[focitrixilous P]

If you like flash animated songs, check out the insanity that is The Egg Song

Grown men weep to the egg song. I Love Eggs!

Oh, no...

[The Master Control P]

This is going to be as bad as that time I let Numa Numa Iei play all night... Thank god this one doesn't loop...

Go Actuator Man!!!

Re:Talk about Microdrives - what about normal driv

[zentu]

Actually We have 500 GB Drive available from Hitachi Right Now, So, you could have 5 TB (roughly, remember it is not technically 5 TB since they consider the next incrument as 1000 not 2 to the 10 (1024))

Congratulations Hitachi

[Ailure]

Now your created the new internet fad, and when I thought people got tired of Numa Numa and badgers.

REVENGE!

[Anonymous Coward]

...
mushroom mushroom
...
mushroom mushroom
...
mushroom mushroom

Aargh! It's a snake!

I can't wait to upgrade my iPod

[bgspence]

This means I'll be able to upgrade my 40GB iPod to 20GB real soon now...

To quote a friend

[Koushiro]

Oh, it looks like you're writing a letter;
The address just gives it away;
Don't you think I could make it better?
Why won't you let me have my say?

Kind of catchy, really...

surreal?

[street]

It's more just a down-market riff on "I'm Just a Bill" from Schoolhouse Rock.

Those Female HDs

[Anonymous Coward]

Those female HDs get me perpendicular.

I'm Just a Bill

[KnarfO]

"I'm Just a Bill" would be my guess to the specific inspirational clip for this one.

Gotta love (Old-)Schoolhouse Rock!