For years hdd had so much space on them compared to portable storage and what you need to save. But now adays, I could quite easily fill 3TB. Portable media space appears to of out paced HDD Space. So is there any new technology's that will see a seriuse increase in HDD capacity.
whens there going to be a break through in HDD.
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Soldato
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Isn't there the new solid state ones? Or arnt they new? lol.
not new, but new as there only just starting to come on to the market. Are they going to increase space though?
I don't think it's a case of portable storage outpacing HDDs rather there has been a change in attitudes to what is stored on disk as opposed to offline media. The availability of digital media and the appearance of media centre type software has, I think, led to people not wanting to have to hunt through shelves of CDs/DVDs looking for what they want. The proliferation of multi-channel TV (and PVRs) has given us an "on demand" culture when it comes to entertainment so it's almost natural for people to expect their stored media to be just as available.
Now you've got two options to achieve that, whacking great big DVD jukeboxes which are big, slow and expensive or digital storage on HDD which is quick, cheap (relatively) and physically small. The sensible choice is obvious.
As to your question, I don't know how much further traditional magnetic disk storage can go before it hits a physical limit of data density. There are alternative technologies out there but they're all still at the theoretical stage - I remember seeing something about some guys spelling "IBM" with a couple of dozen Xeon atoms and there was suggestions that the techniques could be used for data storage. Unfortunately the cost, size and lack of speed of the kit involved kind of rules it out as a practical replacement for HDDs at the moment.
Now you've got two options to achieve that, whacking great big DVD jukeboxes which are big, slow and expensive or digital storage on HDD which is quick, cheap (relatively) and physically small. The sensible choice is obvious.
As to your question, I don't know how much further traditional magnetic disk storage can go before it hits a physical limit of data density. There are alternative technologies out there but they're all still at the theoretical stage - I remember seeing something about some guys spelling "IBM" with a couple of dozen Xeon atoms and there was suggestions that the techniques could be used for data storage. Unfortunately the cost, size and lack of speed of the kit involved kind of rules it out as a practical replacement for HDDs at the moment.
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http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/10/13/speeding-flash-flash
This was an interesting read for me, cheap NAND in RAID config (same principle as RAID anyway).
This was an interesting read for me, cheap NAND in RAID config (same principle as RAID anyway).
I'd rather see a break through in hard drive speed, it's a huge let down on a computer. Capacity can easily be solved by buying more hard drives.
computers are fast enough, especially if you use raid. As you say space isn't a problem for speed as the files you need are only 20 or so GB for windows and games.
However imagine you have a 300 blu ray films you want to put on your computer. You would have to buy 10's of hard drives to acheive that. at 25 or 50GB per cDisk, doesn't take long to fill a 750Gb hdd.
I was wondering the other day if 5.25 HDs might make a comeback. With current recording densities I estimate a 5.25 HD could have up to 6TB of space. Access times would be slower - greater distance to move the heads and probably 5400rpm spin speed - but that wouldn't really matter for a media storage drive.
Seagate are ment to be looking into heat-assisted magnetic recording
which could result in storage capacities as great as 50 terabits per square inch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAMR
wow, really interesting
Very interesting, doesn't look like it's out anytime soon.
However when will perpendicular recording start be used increasing GB significantly?
How about holo drives.
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Imagine an array of those
Imagine an array of those
By the time it comes out it probably wont be that impressive.
37.5TB is more of a maximum using both HARM and perpendicular recording
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That may be true, but I still like to dream and drool from time to time
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Soldato
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At the moment there are many factors preventing a major breakthrough in speed and capacity of Hard Drives.
People forget that hard drives have quite a few moving parts (unlike most of the other main components in a PC) - This alone leaves them open to mechanical failures.
At the moment one of Seagate’s biggest problems is the HGA (or the Head Gimble Assembly)
A voice coil servo/actuator guides the HGA to the right position on the platters. Now assuming an average 2 or 4 Platter drive has 30,000 concentric rings on the platters, how difficult do you think it is to align 2 or 4 Read/write heads on the right track quickly and at 7000+rpm? Manufacturers are getting around this by using another micro actuator on the Read-writes heads themselves - as well as the main actuator that moves the arm.
As well as that, because the tracks/sectors are so close these days - how much crosstalk do you think is present between the tracks (and what if the head is flying just slightly too high or low - or god forbid, even skewed ? )
And then don't forget the mean time between failures. Your average drive in an Office PC will be spinning 4 hours a day for a couple of years at least before it kicks the bucket. How would you like it if your HD crashed after 2 months all the time?
I’m not even gonna start about the Error-correction needed as the heads heat-up (the magneto-resistance fluctuates massively when you change temp) – or the compression and amplification needed to pick out a single magnetic bubble on a surface of millions.
I spent 2 weeks on a Hard Drive technology course given by one of the top Inventors at IBM. This guy had over 200 patents to his name and believe me, it’s amazing these things ever work at all. I would even go so far as to say the technology used in HD's is far more advanced than Processors or RAM
People forget that hard drives have quite a few moving parts (unlike most of the other main components in a PC) - This alone leaves them open to mechanical failures.
At the moment one of Seagate’s biggest problems is the HGA (or the Head Gimble Assembly)
A voice coil servo/actuator guides the HGA to the right position on the platters. Now assuming an average 2 or 4 Platter drive has 30,000 concentric rings on the platters, how difficult do you think it is to align 2 or 4 Read/write heads on the right track quickly and at 7000+rpm? Manufacturers are getting around this by using another micro actuator on the Read-writes heads themselves - as well as the main actuator that moves the arm.
As well as that, because the tracks/sectors are so close these days - how much crosstalk do you think is present between the tracks (and what if the head is flying just slightly too high or low - or god forbid, even skewed ? )
And then don't forget the mean time between failures. Your average drive in an Office PC will be spinning 4 hours a day for a couple of years at least before it kicks the bucket. How would you like it if your HD crashed after 2 months all the time?
I’m not even gonna start about the Error-correction needed as the heads heat-up (the magneto-resistance fluctuates massively when you change temp) – or the compression and amplification needed to pick out a single magnetic bubble on a surface of millions.
I spent 2 weeks on a Hard Drive technology course given by one of the top Inventors at IBM. This guy had over 200 patents to his name and believe me, it’s amazing these things ever work at all. I would even go so far as to say the technology used in HD's is far more advanced than Processors or RAM
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