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100x Faster Hard Drive In Lab

Posted by kdawson on from the lasers-and-gadolinium dept.

Gary lets us know about research out of the Netherlands that has succeeded in reading and writing a hard disk using polarized laser light. The researchers claim this offers a 100-times speedup over reading/writing using magnets. People have been trying for years to write data using polarized light; the secret of the current work's success lies in its disk's materials — gadolinium, iron, and cobalt. Working prototype drives should be available within a decade.

1 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. link... by cosmocain · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...to the original publication.

    the really fascinating thing is not THAT they succeeded to change the magnet field via lasers, it's the speed if you compare their figures to this