Nanotube Lube Replenishment for Massive Drives

PetManimal writes "Techworld reports that Seagate has just patented something called 'Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording,' which features nanotechnology and could lead to a 1.46TB 2.5-in. drive. The article says 'Storing data properly in extremely small areas requires the magnetic material to be heated during the writing phase, but this causes the lubricant film deposited on top of the magnetized recording layer to evaporate. Seagate's patent resolves this problem by having a reservoir inside the disk casing that contains nanotube-based lubricant. Some of this is periodically pumped out as a vapor and deposited on the surface of the disk, replenishing the evaporated lubricant.'"

Comments

good idea!

[gEvil (beta)]

Some of this is periodically pumped out as a vapor and deposited on the surface of the disk, replenishing the evaporated lubricant.

Hey, I could use some of this this! Oh wait...it says disk...

Re:good idea!

[op12]

Yeah, you probably read 2.5in and made a quick logical jump.

...I couldn't help myself - you left the door wide open on that one.

Re:good idea!

[gEvil (beta)]

Hey, they don't call it a nanotube for nothin'...

Lube......replenishment you say?

[LordPhantom]

Lube replenishment?
For.... massive drives?
Some headlines just write themselves. And don't mod me down, you were thinking about how cool it would be to have a peripheral that would do that - this is slashdot, don't lie!

Drives needing lube?

[CRiMSON]

I wonder if this will lower the mean time to failure of these drives? I currently have some old 9G scsi disks that have been running daily since 1998/1999 and still work flawlessly. How much lube are they putting in these drives? It seems to me this could be bad thing(tm) put enough lube in for 3 years, and every 3 years sell new drives.

Correct me if I'm wrong...

[The Living Fractal]

.. But, after reading about this days ago, I was under the impression the lubricant itself wasn't 'nanotube based' but rather was distributed across the platters in a controlled fashion via nanotubes. Insofar that the tubes themselves only allow a certain, small, amount of the lubricant to escape and only when the absence of lubricant on the surface produces enough differential pressure to allow it.

And, incidentally, the ten year life of the lubricant reservoir should be sufficient IMHO. I can't imagine in ten years we'll still be using the same hard drives anyway. I think Seagate is banking on it.

TLF

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong...

[The Living Fractal]

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/07/04/seagate_leaky_dr ives/

TG Daily a few days ago.

Perfluoropolyether is the lubricant. And it's not 'nanotube-based' at all. It's delivered via the tubes.

From the article: "Vapor PFPE also surrounds the platter. As the drive spins, areas of the platter will get hot, which will wear out the lubricant. The vapor PFPE deposits on the platter to replace the worn out lubricant. The "condensing" vapor lowers vapor pressure which then draws out lubricant from the CNTs until the pressure is equalized."

It does say the reservoir will provide ten years of 'practical' use. For someone who uses their hard drives a LOT (maybe someone without enough RAM? :)) I could see this lasting only 7-8 years. Still quite a while IMHO.

TLF

Vaporware?

[Gates82]

No release date yet, so can we classify this as vaporware?

--
So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's Sister?

When you have a HAMR ...

[cylcyl]

everything starts to look like it needs a Nano Assisted Information Lubricant

Hard drive manufacturers are idiots.

[zymano]

Is density really the problem ?

We need FASTER access times.

We need multiple read/write heads.

Re:KY

[tedgyz]

Oh wait, this is slashdot, I'm probably in the 0.01% of people here who get laid.

Use of your favorite lube does not necessarily imply that you got laid. :-)