New technolgy from Seagate: HAMR

[Drizzt]

Acronymous of [B] Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording [B] , it's a new way of recording data on hard disks.

Currently, hard disks write data by using a magnetic head to alter the state of a magnetic surface. This technology will find it's stop, according to Seagate, in a maximum of 5-10 years.

The solution from Seagate is, as said, HAMR. In this new technology, data will be written to a special magnetic support that will be heated from a little laser in the exact point where the head will write the data. The subsequent cooling will stabilises and fix the written data.

source: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/

[VJ]

Wasn't a similar technology used in M/O disks ? (using a laser to heat the surface, thus allowing it to be altered magnetically) ?

Jörg

[Maggi]

yup, it's an old hat in new clothings ...

[TdB]

but its got a new hat!

j/k

[Technoid]

Why not

[az]

I can't see what this would improve, other than better protection against aging, magnetic fields, etc - not all too important with hard disks, if you ask me...

AZ

[DGhost]

with higher precision lasers this could, in theory, lead to higher platter densities if only the area touched by the "laser" is capable of being written to...

wonder how the transfer rates are...

[SpiralDragon]

now what i would be intrested in seeing is a multidimentional based storage using crystals or smothinglike that.... with extra high speedzzz...

[az]

Holographic storage is already working in labs, and does promise VERY high capacity - though about data lntegrity and speeds.

DGhost - thanks for the heads up, wasn't thinking apparently

AZ

[Greebe]

Holographic storage has been used by IBM for over ten years now. Take a trip to IBM's "research Triangle Park" facility sometime and you will see

[xortam]

Hell, I remember reading about a holographic storage prototype back in 1974.

[Greebe]

eYup... what I saw on display was ancient... tho something like 1k layers deep (this was back in '90)