RSSFujitsu Hard Drives: Toward 1 Tb per Square Inch
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published November 29, 2006, 7:08 PM
A laser capable of being focused to a spot on a rotating disk just 80 nanometers across is what Fujitsu needed to be able to beat competitors Toshiba and Seagate in the race toward terabit areal densities. Yesterday, Fujitsu announced they'd achieved that goal.
While Toshiba and Seagate have been in competition with one another to drive up the areal density of hard drives using new perpendicular recording technology, the scientists at Fujitsu -- whose own consumer drives have had to play catch-up recently in the quality department -- have been planning to leap-frog their competitors in one fell swoop. There's a physical maximum, they found, to how densely data can be packed even with perpendicular mechanisms.
Their objective is to overcome that physical barrier by means of a curious physical trick involving at least three devices a hard drive has never had to use thus far: a very small space heater, a virtual refrigerator just as small, and an optical reading mechanism.
You read correctly: an optical element, not a magnetic one, but not for reading the data. It's to locate the spot on the rotating disk where the heating element will work its alchemy. Up to now, Fujitsu has had two of the three elements in its back pocket. Yesterday, it announced the third: an optical element that will help future hard drives achieve areal densities greater than the 1 terabit (Tb) per square inch theoretical maximum.
The blame for the maximum limit on magnetic recording, according to Fujitsu scientists Koji Matsumoto, Akihiro Inomata, and Shin-ya Hasegawa, has to do with the size of ferromagnetic (iron) grains. You can theoretically make them as small as you want, but if you make them any smaller than they already are, they won't retain their magnetic charge over a sustained period of time. The act of writing data literally heats these grains up, which helps them retain data; but over time, as they very gradually cool, the likelihood that they'll lose their data increases as they fall victim to what Fujitsu scientists call thermal fluctuation.
As a result, you can't miniaturize the magnetic grain enough to enable read/write heads, using the current technology, to store data up to an areal density of 1 Tb/sq. in.
Fujitsu's proposed solution is extraordinary, involving changing the physical properties of the storage media temporarily, just at the point of the write operation, using specifically focused heat. At room temperature, it takes a relatively sizeable magnetic charge (coercivity) to erase the state of stored data on a disk so it can be changed. But as the temperature in the vicinity rises, the amount of charge required decreases. If you heat a material up just enough, to what's called the Curie temperature, it loses its magnetism altogether.
For the Fujitsu process to work, a heating element needs to bring the write spot on the disk up to as close to the Curie temperature as possible, though just below. As you might have guessed, what Fujitsu needs is a laser, but one which is integrated directly into the magnetic write head of the drive. Its spot size needs to be no greater than 50 nanometers (nm).
This way, the laser can heat up the precise spot on the drive where data can be stored using a minimal charge. When the spot is rapidly cooled, it then holds its charge for a theoretically long period of time.
Up to now, it's all been theory; what Fujitsu needed was what others would consider a miracle in near-field optics. Yesterday, the company's labs announced they'd achieved something at least very close to that miracle: While scientists were hoping for 50 nm x 50 nm with 2% optical efficiency, they achieved 80 nm x 60 nm, though with 17% optical efficiency.
It might just work. If it does, the terabit barrier will be broken, and the mechanism that takes manufacturers past that barrier will have a Fujitsu patent stamped all over it. If Seagate and Toshiba were wondering what's been holding Fujitsu up for so long, they just got their answer.
wow...that's why they've been hiding for a while. They're trying to come back hard!
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|Hmm this is all nice n' stuffs but screw all this. Where the hell is the development in holographic storage at in this point in time??? That's where the REAL "ooo's and ahh's" are gonna be warranted for the next generation. No mechanical elements? Sweet!
These companies are focusing on sssqqeeeeeeezing the f*ck out of every last bit of life there is to mechanical drive technology when they could be focusing on other technologies with VAST real-estate future expansion and ample head-room for experimentation without the current physics barriers that are choking our current engineers into creating sh*t like Fujitsu has, just because of the $$ aspect.
It's just like the electric car. It was BRUTALLY MURDERED by corporate America back in the 90's through a vicious and unmerciful not-so-secret campain when they suddenly realized if they ever let the electric car succeed, they'd be losing HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS because the f*cking car needed like 1% maintenance. Billions lost from no parts like carburetors and parts that traditional gasoline engines require to run. Trillions lost from OIL companies since it needed NO GAS to run, etc..
Now they have this "hybrid" car sh*t when they never even needed to exist. We had the perfect cars! Anyway, same thing's happening with HD's now. We don't need this technology, there are much better ones that should be worked on.
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|agreed 100%. read the article and it sounded very cool and all but i just couldn't get the question "why?" out of my had.
electric car.. i want one of these!!!
http://www.teslamotors.com/index.php?js_enabled=1
only 100,000 $
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|Add holographic storage to the list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology
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|1TB on a drive is way cool but I have a huge issue with the Fujitsu brand.
After all the high failure rates they have had on their drives in the past, I would not buy one.
My servers need drives that are high quality and have high service life. Not the low grade products Fujitsu has sold to us in the past.
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|That's how magneto optical disks work, except they don't have the rapidly cooling "virtual refrigerator". MO is by far the most reliable media, this could be very interesting.
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|This is really good stuff.
My questions to hard drive manufacturers are:
1. How far can we push conventional hard drives?
2. Flash drives are better to some extent (so far), but very pricey. Would hard drive manufacturers be threatened by flash drives?
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|Does this bring us closer to the Holodeck yet? I'm still sitting on my Scarlett Johansson script.
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|"...ity of 1 TB/sq2"
of 1 TB/in^2 or at least 1 TB/in2.
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|was wondering about that too.
1 terabyte per square squared
;-)
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|Cool, wheres the 5TB MP3 players? Let me know when they break the petabyte or exabyte barrier.
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|No joke I've got 320984759237850238750923859283509238590238759023850932875092375908 songs I need to hold.
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|got something against 1's and 6's?
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|LOL!
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|There is no pleasing some people. There is a lot of work going into other drive technologies, but they're not going to release something that is prohibitively expensive or potentially unreliable. This technology is just an extension of the current PROVEN technology and should still have a very high quality of reliability.
What was the first guy talking about? Electric cars are the perfect example but for the opposite reason for what he was saying. Electric cars:
- Are limited to weight, so have to be a smaller vehicle (like a small hatchback)
- Batteries take up a lot of room
- They have a limited range
- Takes a long time to recharge. Even with a quick charge system its impracticle to recharge a vehicle for at least a couple of hours every couple of hundred km.
- A car of 5 leads to a massive reduction in range
- The batteries need to be replaced every two years and they're very expensive when taking into consideration the whole car
- Weight & size restraints leads to lower comfort.
All these problems are common in hybrid vehicles also.
Now he's saying they're perfect, thats a weird sense of perfection!
This is related to the hard drives as combustion cars represent magnetic drives and electric cars represent the new technologies. Like electric/hybrid cars there is a lot of money going into other drive technologies and only when they prove reliable and are value for money will they succeed.
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|About that electric car:
"Takes a long time to recharge."
Yeah really? Have You ever heard something about the new "batteries"? They are just like capacitors and they load in SECONDS!!
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