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High Density Storage

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the more-room-for-mp3s dept.

Charlie Engasser wrote in to tell us about 216 gigabytes hard drives over at Seagate. Uses "Optically Assisted Winchester" (OAW), which "augments traditional magnetic read/write techniques with a laser to allow positioning so precise that it can store over 100,000 tracks across one inch of drive surface". I guess it just means in a few years we'll be able to do with video what we do today with sound. From this page.

12 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. What about the seek time? by jandrese · · Score: 2

    The article mentioned a "two stage" head positioning process where the head is aligned with the regular moter mechanism, then precisely algined with a combination of strands of fiber and mirrors. This all sounds like it adds a lot of complexity to the seek process, and possibly a few milliseconds to the seek time. Does anybody have the real specs on this yet? Is it even a real product yet (the article was a little vague)?

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    I read the internet for the articles.
  2. Re:terabyte servers by jandrese · · Score: 2

    Unfortunatly size is not the problem on those terabyte servers, seek time is. I know of one company that buys 18GB drives and only uses 2GB of those just to keep the number of spindles high. They constantly complain that no drive manufacturer is using these high density technologies to build smaller faster cheaper drives, but rather to build big expensive drives.

    EIDE is not going to be able to handle 100MB of access a second in random 4k blocks across all of the drives.

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    I read the internet for the articles.
  3. archiving MP3s and pornography and... by jabber · · Score: 2

    That new Micros~1 help system.
    You know, the one with 30fps, truecolor video clips and CD quality SurroundSound renderings of a Gerraud (sp) shaded, texture mapped digital assistant.

    Remember back in the days when a harddisk was a commodity/expensive option? My XT had two 20MB drives - I was hot sh!t. I ran WP off of a floppy and was quite content.

    What's the size of a full install of MS-Word2k?? 100MB? Giv'em ample resources, and the kids in Redmond will run out of them.

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  4. it's all coming together by Victor+Danilchenko · · Score: 2

    Ultra-high speed backbone technologies... CPUs too fast for most common tasks... ADSL... Now super-duper-humongous harddrives...

    I expect that within 2 years, we will have computers more powerful than we know what to do with -- most of our current programs simply do not use the available CPU resources already, and the same will happen with the storage and bandwidth. At that point, some totally new paragidm will spring up -- for nature abhors a vacuum. We will foigure out a Totally New Thing to do with our computers.

    What will it be, that will be able to tax all of those resources? True VR? Totally wired environment, with the computers as the master controllers? We have those things already... Heck, I wish I knew what it will be! (I'd probably become very rich if I did). One thing I am fairly certain of -- we are at the edge of a paradigm shift in computing.

    The New Thing (tm) is coming! The New Thing (tm) is coming!

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    1. Re:it's all coming together by RobinH · · Score: 2

      I expect that within 2 years, we will have computers more powerful than we know what to do with

      Personally, I think we've long since surpassed the amount of computing power that we would know what to do with. Why else would we have screen savers? :-)

      Every day I ask myself what is really worth doing with a computer? Games are fun. Email is just a way to circumvent the post office. We are truly stuck on this constant search for a cool application of computers, but we have a harder and harder time trying to do it.

      Personally, the times when I first saw Wolfenstein, civilization (I), and scorched Earth, I got a lot more excited about computers than I ever do now. Now I just take ever expanding resources for granted - almost in a fatalist way. I refrain from buying new hardware now, knowing that hardware is just going to go obsolete long before I can get my money's worth out of it.

      The fact is, 95% of the computers out there are far overpowered for what any of their owners use them for. E-mail is not a CPU intensive task!

      Which brings us to SETI@home - go team Slashdot!

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      "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
  5. Re:The mind boggles by Victor+Danilchenko · · Score: 3

    I have no idea what I would do with over 200GB of storage. Mind you, that's what we think whenever a new high-capacity technology appears. Within a few years, it's the standard size and we all wonder how we coped with our old "tiny" drives.

    I think there is a cruicial difference: Always before, the technology was playing catch-up with demand. We always needed MORE space, memory, speed! The technology has now overtaken popular demand (not the specialized computer needs, of course).

    Let me tell you this: Since I got 11G drive a few months ago (in addition to my old 6G) -- rather cheaply, too! -- for the first time in my life, I have actually had free storage. LOTS of it. I have the content of a half-dozen CDs on my disks, a bunch of programs, some CD-games with full installation (you know, the kind which installd 500M straight onto the harddrive) -- and I still have space left. I am now trying to INVENT new uses for that space, whereas before, I was always trying to invent new ways to reduce my space usage.

    My point? The existing computer paradigm has nearly exhausted itself. We will need to figure out something radically new to do with our computers, in order to actually use all the power we are getting.

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  6. Now that's what I call bogus by Kaa · · Score: 2

    2.5G of data stored in the human brain?? Boggle. This is so far removed from reality it's not even funny. Humans store a great deal of visual information, which is heavy of bit usage. Besides, there are experiments which seem to indicate that people never forget anything they saw/heard. If you electrically stimulate the right spot in the brain, the experience will come back, very vivid and perfectly remembered.

    And top speed of storing data?? 100bps??? Close your eyes. Do you remember what you've just seen? How many bits per second is that? Aw, geez...


    Kaa

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    Kaa
    Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
  7. I still call it bogus by Kaa · · Score: 2

    You don't remember an entire picture - you remember things about the picture

    Well, I don't know about you, but I have a reasonably good visual memory and frequently remember things by visualizing in my mind a picture of what I need and then scanning it for the specific detail/item I want. Lossy compression -- sure, but the quality is not as bad as you make it. There is *huge* amount of visual information stored in the brain, the problem is retrieving it. If I briefly think about my last vacation, for example, I can remember some stuff, but not all that much. But if I stop and really think about it, immersing myself into that experience, so much stuff that I actually remember pops up...

    And didn't say anything about the methodolody -- measuring the brain's storage capacity by checking how many yes/no questions you need to guess what an average moron thinks about? Gimme a break.

    Kaa

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    Kaa
    Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
  8. Re:Memory Lane by Stephen+Williams · · Score: 2

    I had a 48KB Sinclair Spectrum+ and a tape recorder. Wonder how many C90 tapes you'd need to store 216GB? :-)

  9. Re:Where does the number 216 come from? by Jburkholder · · Score: 2

    >maybe Seagate's current drives have 6 platters in them?

    Duh, that's it, of course. ( 36 x 6 = 216 )

    So that assumes the existing drive configurations with this new density. Seems more likely you'll see different configurations at smaller capacities, at least in the near-term. There seems like a natural barrier to this being competitive with 14-25 gig drives for individual users until something over 50 gig is needed on a wide basis (read: by your average 3d gamer, not your 3d graphics designers).

    I wonder at what price/gig this new type of HD becomes practical for non-commercial applications, and an attractive and/or only alternative two 25+ gig drives?

  10. Where does the number 216 come from? by Jburkholder · · Score: 3

    I've re-read the press release a few times and don't see this number mentioned, only the density and "36 gigabytes on a single, two-sided disc or an equivalent of 25 Gbits/square inch, if applied to conventional drive technology".

    Was this number derived by extrapolating current platter sizes and density? Someone questioned what we would ever do with 200+ gigs in a consumer device, but I wonder if the real potential of this might be to make smaller drives with very large capacity that might go into other devices besides multi-purpose home computers? Devices where even a half-height, 3.5" are too big (portable digital audio/video devices, little electronic dogs, etc?)



  11. Imagine what you can store!! by Larry1369 · · Score: 3

    With a 216 GB hardrive.
    About 4,236 MP3's.
    I'm thinking about 3684 hours of music!!
    You can start a playlist and listen for
    153 straight days!
    MP3 has taken over sex as the #1 search in search engines.
    Imagine the sex that can be stored.
    All those pics.
    Let's say you store in JPEG format.
    Let's say at the high end, they average 200k each.
    (All us pervs know this is definitely high.)
    Over a million JPEGS!
    Imagine that slideshow!
    Man would you get hair on your palms and go blind.

    I had enough ranting.


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