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Solve : Super Hard Drive from Wasted Uranium? |
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Answer» If it works, super hard drives are coming son. I like how the article says that it could be the future of hard drives and then quotes the researcher basically saying "don't expect it in future hard drives".Right. Besides the technical problems, does the market really need bigger hard drives? What would you do with a smartphone that contained the entire library of congress? Quote The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with more than 158 million items on approximately 838 miles of bookshelves.But what if a super small super heavy metal Hard Drive was cheaper and faster than a SSD? For what it is worth, when this story first came out some people took it very seriously. Two more links published earlier. http://www.geek.com/chips/uranium-could-be-the-future-of-hard-drives-1354341/ http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/109688-New-Uranium-Compound-Could-Lead-to-Atomic-Hard-Drives I think memristors are more likely to be used in future, at least in consumer devices. I think that memristors will be cheaper to manufacture than HDDs. Hard drive as an electro-mechanical device that requires precisely machined components, if memristors hit the mass market the manufacturing price could be lower than that of HDDs. Memristors should also use less power and they will practically be a system on a chip, EVERYTHING in one package. They are the future, at least for the portable devices. As for the HDDs, I think we really do need larger ones. I don't know about you Geek-9pm, but I've almost filled my 500 GB drive, I need more space. And think about data centers - how much more space will Facebook or Google need in the following years?Quote from: Geek-9pm on June 30, 2014, 10:57:03 PM does the market really need bigger hard drives?Maybe not right at the moment, current 4tb drives are generally large enough for most current uses, but in the future we will need larger drives, especially as video moves towards 4k which takes up significantly more disk space. Back in the 80s people said that a 100mb hard drive was massive and couldn't see why anyone would need more. Quote from: Geek-9pm on June 30, 2014, 10:57:03 PM But what if a super small super heavy metal Hard Drive was cheaper and faster than a SSD?If they were then that would be great, but as they are still mechanical objects this would be very difficult and you still get the issues of robustness which is one of the biggest benefits of an SSD - I can throw my laptop in a bag, carry it around and move it while it's running without fear of damaging a hard drive. I also like how the article talks about them being used in mobile devices. I can't see hard drives being used in future smartphones - They are fragile and having a disc spinning will not help their already poor battery life, not to mention the size compared to flash chips that can be soldered to a PCB and take up almost no space at all. I can't see any new hard drive technologies taking over from solid state due to all the benefits that SSDs have and how rapidly the price of them is decreasing. I also can't see SSDs killing hard drives completely any time soon, I can see them taking over in laptops and potentially desktop PCs but Hard Drives will be required for large amounts of storage for quite some time yet.Thank you all for you contributions to this thread. Not only are they looking at different materials for HDD technology, but also different mechanical structures. About variant mechanical devices. It has been shown that they can be made very small. Besides rotation devices, there are other ways to crate a moving magnetic element. A HDD has two rotation devices. One is constantly going around, wile the other strata and stops. They have tried variations of the speed and position to improve speed and reduce size. This, along with more dense recording media, could result in two or three orders of magnitude in size reduction. Very small mechanical devices are more robust. Think of insects. Quote from: Geek-9pm on July 01, 2014, 08:42:13 AM Very small mechanical devices are more robust. Think of insects. I'm not sure that is a good example of what you are trying to say, given that most insects don't live more than year, maybe two, with those living longer lifespans being the exception rather than the rule.Quote from: Geek-9pm on July 01, 2014, 08:42:13 AM Very small mechanical devices are more robust. Think of insects.Even the smallest mechanical device cannot be more robust than something with no moving parts at all. If we are going by insects now, compare an insect to a small stone. With hard drives nowadays, size is not important, They already go down to 1.8" in consumer machines and even smaller in CERTAIN cases, smartphones and tablets will continue to use solid state forms of storage. New technology is not to fit the same amount of data in a smaller drive, it is to fit more data in the same size of drive.The Rolling Stones compared to insects such as the Beatles have been far more robust...Quote from: patio on July 01, 2014, 11:37:44 AM The Rolling Stones compared to insects such as the Beatles have been far more robust...You win, Patio. Can't top that! |
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