Hard drive manufacterers introduce two new ways to increase storage space.

[zekrahminator]

As flash storage technology continues to get more advanced, and as laptops begin to use flash as their main method of storage, hard drive manufacterers are beginning to get creative to keep their sales. Starting last year, perpendicualr hard drive technology has allowed the density, and space, of new hard drives to increase by roughly 50% a year. However, if drives continue gaining density at this rate, they could eventually become dense enough to magnetize and erase themselves at room temperature. While we won't have to worry about this for a few years, it is definitely a concern. And so, Seagate and Hitachi have come up with solutions to this problem. Seagate is going to begin implementing "heat assisted technology", which adds the heating of the hard drive platters to the recording process. Hitachi will use "patterned media", which is a reorganization of the recording platters in a hard drive.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Alec§taar]

"And, the wheel, goes round... & round" (@ 10-15k rpm, no less to boot!)



* Things get better & better, & that's some news to me on perpendicular recording technology having a "potential drawback" in that it can get SO 'densely packed' that it can end up erasing itself!

(Way new news to me!)

APK

P.S.=> AND, first time I have heard of heat NOT BEING THE ENEMY (to offset the perp. tech potential weakness no less)... nice read "Z", thanks! apk

 

[oldschool]

How many people need an HD with a 100 Gig. plus capacity??? Maybe 1 in 100,000. The hyped increase in capacity is a worthless "feature" few can use nor desire. Give me faster read / write speeds, lower heat and power consumption and you might get my attention. Otherwise it's all just jive marketing. See S-ATA drive warranty / reliability data as evidence of hype.

 

[Alec§taar]

How many people need an HD with a 100 Gig. plus capacity??? Maybe 1 in 100,000. The hyped increase in capacity is a worthless "feature" few can use nor desire. Give me faster read / write speeds, lower heat and power consumption and you might get my attention. Otherwise it's all just jive marketing. See S-ATA drive warranty / reliability data as evidence of hype.

For programs & OS storage? I agree.

It is more for data storage imo, especially w/ the sizes of MP3 &/or Divx Rips etc..

I too, am a "performance nut/fiend" as you appear to be, but... there IS something to be said for "perpendicular recording" in this regard:

Seagate's use of it, has SMOKED even my diskdrive setup (see my sig) on READS, due to increased density of storage per square (insert measurement here), but did lose to me on CPU-use & access/seeks speeds.

We did an HDTach test on it in fact (more geared to "end user" desktop use patterns, rather than server-patterns, which my system is MOSTLY geared to, but the point was there & that WAS the exact results, my HDD setup in RAID 0 below on a caching controller, vs. INSTG8R's perp. recording disk by Seagate).

* So, it does help performance too!

APK

P.S.=> On warranties? WD's is excellent - 5 yr. "Enterprise-Class" type, unmatched initially by all other oem's of HDD's in fact. Their "Raptor" series has had it, since day #1 & the 36gb model (I have that, the bigger/faster 74gb, & the 2 Raptor "X"'s in my sig below)...

In fact? One of my older 36gb units "crapped out" on me, so what happened? WD honored their warranty & REPLACED IT WITH THE BIGGER/FASTER 74gb I have now... that's HOW COOL WD has been, to me, personally!

(I was impressed, & they gained a lifelong customer for the most part!)... apk

 

[Yin]

How many people need an HD with a 100 Gig. plus capacity??? Maybe 1 in 100,000. The hyped increase in capacity is a worthless "feature" few can use nor desire. Give me faster read / write speeds, lower heat and power consumption and you might get my attention. Otherwise it's all just jive marketing. See S-ATA drive warranty / reliability data as evidence of hype.

I guess im 1 of those in the 100,000. But i do agree with you, we need faster hd spds at affordable soloutions the pci ram thingy is tooo expensive.

 

[Alec§taar]

the pci ram thingy is tooo expensive.

A better one's coming (even better than the HyperOS III &/or Gigabyte IRAM GC etc.):

DDRDrive x1 PCI-Express based unit!



* My money WILL be on that one, replacing the PCI 2.2/PC-133 SDRAM model I use now in the CENATEK "RocketDrive"...

APK

P.S.=> Once I get THAT one? I will put this one in my sig you comment upon, back into the rig it came from (my SQLServer 2005/IIS6.x lab server rig)... it will get the bennies from using these again, & the 'rig in my sig' below, will get faster/better overall & MAINLY via increased "burst speeds" due to a superior RAM type & bustype on it in combination by way of comparison to the older one I use now (CENATEK)! apk

 

[stealthfighter]

Isnt that stuff your talking about ram on a card that you can put pagefile on?

 

[Alec§taar]

Isnt that stuff your talking about ram on a card that you can put pagefile on?

Yes, it is... in reply to the person whom I replied to... & it works, for FAR MORE than just pagefile.sys placements & added speeds (especially seek/access - 1000's of times faster than the fastest std. electro-mechanical HDD).

See my sig below in fact, for just SOME ideas of what else can be placed onto it for greater performance... & there is FAR more that can be, but mostly in "industrial environs".

APK

 

[NamesDontMatter]

How many people need an HD with a 100 Gig. plus capacity??? Maybe 1 in 100,000. The hyped increase in capacity is a worthless "feature" few can use nor desire. Give me faster read / write speeds, lower heat and power consumption and you might get my attention. Otherwise it's all just jive marketing. See S-ATA drive warranty / reliability data as evidence of hype.

Looks like I'm 2 in 100,000.
If you start playing around with media you need much more then 100gb. When I use my TV card, I record at highest quality 12 mb/s. Thats roughly 4gb is 30 minutes. So If I were to record a show of Myth Busters thats 8GB gone, until I watch it and delete it. Also I like to backup my favorite DVDs to my PC at fully quality. Sure maybe you don't need it but alot of other people do. And also when bigger better ones come out the prices of the 100gb ones lessen. So either way its a win, win deal.

 

[zekrahminator]

I hope that you're getting really good TV NDM, a 12mb/s recording is wasted on a 5mb/s transmission .

 

[G.T]

How many people need an HD with a 100 Gig. plus capacity??? Maybe 1 in 100,000. The hyped increase in capacity is a worthless "feature" few can use nor desire. Give me faster read / write speeds, lower heat and power consumption and you might get my attention. Otherwise it's all just jive marketing. See S-ATA drive warranty / reliability data as evidence of hype.

In this day and age, pretty much everyone if you think about it or they did.

Vista hits the stores soon and that requires what, 15GB of space right off the bat. Add some basic Apps and progs on top of that and you have chewed through the recommended 40GB HDD they state is a minimum requirement. Throw on a few modernish games and you are through 60GB, add to that photographs from a digital camera , personal files, some music and maybe a film or two and you have eaten a 100GB of space without even being 1 month into owning the HDD.

We are more and more living in a digital media age, so larger HDD's are required and a few of them at least in any system that is going to be of use to anyone for a few years. Till my rig has at least a TeraByte of storage I won't be able to relax because I am constantly heading towards filling up the half TeraByte of storage I currently have. & then I will probably be looking at expanding to 2 TeraBytes as hopefully by then the 500GB drives will have dropped in price cos at the moment they go for silly money.

Aside for this though, files and media is gonna be coming in bigger filesizes once the majority are on broadband or can download TV shows and stuff from their Cable/Sky providers etc etc, they are just starting that kind of stuff here in the UK and soon people will want their fave shows on their systems so they can watch again and again without adverts etc.