Future hard drives

[Mike9876]

When are hard drive manufactures going to relize they've just about hit the limits of magnetic media? Sure, they might come out with 500GB drives, but they would still make noise and be as (un)reliable. If Intel can make transistors the size of molecules, why can't somebody fill a 3.5 bay with molecule size memory transistors? The next generation of 3.5 drives would be measured in terabytes, generation after that petabytes. But people like you and me (well, I assume like you) only need a few hundred GB. How about integrating a 500GB "drive" into the motherboard? "RAM" could be a partition on your "harddrive". A few MB of "Ram" would be plenty if apps run directly from the "harddrive", the swapfile a thing of the past. My own harddrive just crashed and I just had to do some ranting. (Geez, it's only five years old!)

 

[JellyBaby]

Patience, Daniel-son, holographic storage is coming and addresses many of your concerns.

 

[woolmilk]

You might want to look at solid state disks like from
bitmicro.
But be warned, prices are around $1000 per GB.

Integrating a harddrive into the mainboard is a bad idea because you dont want to throw your MB away just because of a drive failure. Also the customer demands are differently so you would have to offer a wide variety of MB with different disk capacities.

Current disk technology is cheap and matured a long time. If you need more reliability then you might want a raid 1 setup. All products with moving parts are prone to fail sooner or later. IDE sooner and SCSI later

Eventually the magnetic storage could be replaced by optical storage which doesnt have the problems of headcrashes. Currently the speed and capacity is better with magnetic disks. Maybe the physikal structure could be changed. While todays disks are circular, you could also build cylindrical storage that could allow for higher rotational speeds and multiple heads.
Chips are small but prices are always depending on the die size and therefor on the number of processors used. Even a TFT display has only a few MB of data "stored". This could change with the development of printable memory and polymere and plastic memory, though theres still only basic research. Im always fascinated by technology advances and like to read about some new discoveries.

I hope you could rescue your data or have some backups.
Dont blame it on the disk, 5 years is ok. Good luck with your replacement drive.

 

[zephyrprime]

Don't bet on the hd manufacturers hitting the paramagnetic limit for quite a while. And as for your hard drive - at least it lasted the duration of it's rated design life (assuming it's ide not scsi) so don't complain so much.

 

[Bovinicus]

The reliability of magnetic media has increased dramatically over the past 5 years. Of course, you have to make sure you buy a reliable drive. The main reason for maturing this process is because of cost. The cost per GB today is not bad at all. Also, FMDs and holographic storage prototypes have already been created. It will be several years before they hit the mainstream, but don't worry, they will come. Imagine, a library of information in a volume of space the size of a sugar cube. Neat stuff.

 

[Markfw]

I paid $900 for a one gig SCSI drive (1/2 heigth) in 1992, so prices and densities have improved dramatically since then. Today you can get a 36 gig SCSI 15k rpm for $343. So for less than 1/2 the price and about (probably) 10x the performance, you can get 36x the stoage from 10 years ago. Be patient !!

 

[ZimZum]

The current technology of magnetic drives limits them to about 50GB per square inch. Seagate is developing a system called HAMR that could store up to 50 Terabytes (1,000GB) per square inch.

 

[passign]

ya, umm.. i need to rma my drive to western digital soon. they better replace it for all the trouble they put me though

 

[fluxquantum]

The current technology of magnetic drives limits them to about 50GB per square inch. Seagate is developing a system called HAMR that could store up to 50 Terabytes (1,000GB) per square inch

wow...50 Terabytes per square inch:Q

 

[nortexoid]

solid state drives are already available but their market viability is, well, not viable...they're too costly.

unless u have money of course.

will they become standard in the future?...probably not until a long and far off distant future because most people are generally satisfied w/ mechanical disks...they're quite cheap, adequately reliable, and have quite large storage capacities....sensitive data can be backed by more reliable methods - a cheap alternative to simply having a more reliable method of primary data storage.

what I really want to see go is mechanical methods of secondary storage...i hate optical discs..there's already 512MB flash cards, so what's the use of a CDRW?...plus they're a mere fraction of the size of a CD and can be reliably written to thousands and thousands of times....DVD-R/RW is a different story since its capacity isn't comparable to flash media...but i'm sure 1gb+ flash media is just around the corner...

 

[BZeto]

I've read about the 'atomic" hard drives. It uses atoms to represent 1's and 0's in the binary code. So if an atom is present its 'on'. If an atom is absent its 'off'. Using this technology they supposedly can store TONS of data in a small space.

 

[boran]

Originally posted by: BZeto
I've read about the 'atomic" hard drives. It uses atoms to represent 1's and 0's in the binary code. So if an atom is present its 'on'. If an atom is absent its 'off'. Using this technology they supposedly can store TONS of data in a small space.

the problem with these is what to do with the removed atoms, there should be an atom storage container and transport system, we're talking about atom mechanics, this is considdered impossible nowadays (might offcourse change)

the cost of the current hard drive alternatives are about 10 to 1000 times higher than the current magnetic tecnology ... a move to optical or magneto-optica (like MD's) could prove an improvement in reliability, but I think the speed and access times will change for the worse ...

 

[BennyD]

check this sh1t out.

that would own on a digital camera

 

[ZimZum]

Originally posted by: fluxquantum

The current technology of magnetic drives limits them to about 50GB per square inch. Seagate is developing a system called HAMR that could store up to 50 Terabytes (1,000GB) per square inch

wow...50 Terabytes per square inch:Q

Heres some info on HAMR if youre intersted.

Seagate HAMR

Extreme Tech

 

[Mike9876]

Hmm, interesting. By "integrating" the HD into the MB I meant the HD would plug in and be easily replaced, like the CPU. I like my things to last a long time. My old system lasted 6 years (about) with a cyrix chip clocked 75x2 on a Matsonic (pc-chips) board and Win98. That system still works and does my sister's homework (she saves her work to a thumbdrive). Win98 seems pretty reliable as long as it has a third party memory manager. Win98 reliable? Yes that's possible, for four years on the same system in fact (as long as it has a memory manager). My current system is a T-bird 1.2 Ghz on an Iwill KK-266r, 256 mb, Win XP pro, 30GB hd (which replaced the one that crashed). Only thing I dont like is the noise. I'm considering a Shuttle sv-24 with a Via C3. Now before you start screaming about 3d game performance I dont plan on playing 3d games. (I have a PS/2 for that). Also, I'm starting to use my CD-r for backups now.

 

[azkiwi]

Originally posted by: BennyD
check this sh1t out.

that would own on a digital camera

I think that is to the point - these experimental storage methodologies seem more intended for small devices that are currently 'storage challenged' by size limitations (and no doubt for large commercail applications). Its hard to forsee why or when we might need terrabyte drives on our PCs. Store your life on your hard drive .. in real time. Ugh.

 

[Tab]

Heh, azkiwi I see what you mean. When is the average consumer going to need a 300-gig plus harddrive?

 

[Mike9876]

If you set up a pc to work like a TiVo box and/or discover Kazza with xDsl before riaaa shuts it down you'll find that 300 GB can be useful. Right now my budget only allows for a 30GB HD, cd-rs, and VHS tapes.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: Mike9876
When are hard drive manufactures going to relize they've just about hit the limits of magnetic media? Sure, they might come out with 500GB drives, but they would still make noise and be as (un)reliable. If Intel can make transistors the size of molecules, why can't somebody fill a 3.5 bay with molecule size memory transistors? The next generation of 3.5 drives would be measured in terabytes, generation after that petabytes. But people like you and me (well, I assume like you) only need a few hundred GB. How about integrating a 500GB "drive" into the motherboard? "RAM" could be a partition on your "harddrive". A few MB of "Ram" would be plenty if apps run directly from the "harddrive", the swapfile a thing of the past. My own harddrive just crashed and I just had to do some ranting. (Geez, it's only five years old!)

a bit is stored in an area far smaller than anyone's production manufacturing process can currently make a transistor... and it requires at least 2 elements to form a bit for solid state storage (iirc). areal densities. are also increasing faster than transistor densities.

 

[aka1nas]

Originally posted by: nortexoid
solid state drives are already available but their market viability is, well, not viable...they're too costly. unless u have money of course. will they become standard in the future?...probably not until a long and far off distant future because most people are generally satisfied w/ mechanical disks...they're quite cheap, adequately reliable, and have quite large storage capacities....sensitive data can be backed by more reliable methods - a cheap alternative to simply having a more reliable method of primary data storage. what I really want to see go is mechanical methods of secondary storage...i hate optical discs..there's already 512MB flash cards, so what's the use of a CDRW?...plus they're a mere fraction of the size of a CD and can be reliably written to thousands and thousands of times....DVD-R/RW is a different story since its capacity isn't comparable to flash media...but i'm sure 1gb+ flash media is just around the corner...

They already have 1GB CF cards, but they run about $800 each.
IMHO, Flash will never be the memory of choice for something like PC hardrives. it's relatively expensive because its solid-state and non-volatile. It also has a 10000 write cycle lifetime(more or less), which would make it less than ideal for a hardrive(10k writes sounds like a lot, but magnetic drives have like 10 or 100 times that lifecycle, and even they wear out sometimes.). Not saying that solid state will never go mainstream, just not in it's current forms.

 

[WheelsCSM]

What I would like to know is when they are going to stop focusing on making hard drives bigger, and start focusing on making them faster. My 30 Gig drive is still big enough for me (although I am approaching the limits on it). I have had it for 3 yrs now, and the newer ones may be like 6 times bigger, but they aren't even twice as fast. Probably not even 50% faster.