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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.

3 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. 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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    Victor Danilchenko

  2. 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?)



  3. 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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