Hard Rectangular Drive Could be the Hard Disk Answer to SSDs

So then according to the plan view, there is a spring located on the right side that would push against the spring bar on the left side. They then allow this bar to arc positive and negative, controlled somehow,piezeo?, allowing the media to move but the heads remain stationary. This must have some noise factor as you can not vibrate a bar, probably at least several thousand times per second, without noise. On the bright side if they keep it standard size, there are a lot of HDD noise dampening products out there.

[Evo85]

Interesting stuff. Lets hope it lives up to the hype...

[tkpenalty]

At that scale i'd call this an SSD... with 64 sectors, it is just as complicated or even more complicated than SSDs to manage, and they don't seem to mention that.

[InnocentCriminal]

Originally Posted by tkpenalty

At that scale i'd call this an SSD...

It's not Solid State though.

[tkpenalty]

Originally Posted by InnocentCriminal

It's not Solid State though.

Considering the fabrication process its almost solid state. I'd think it would be wiser to produce magnetic memory semiconductors that use a platter for the memory. But atm, this would NOT be cheaper to produce. I dont know how 64 heads are supposed to communicate with the system without a RAID-like setup inside; its 64 Hdds in one hdd.

This isnt reinventing the wheel, this is using caterpillar legs instead.

[Weer]

So, wait.. are these better than SSD's or in between HDD's and SSD's?

[h3llb3nd4]

Originally Posted by Weer

So, wait.. are these better than SSD's or in between HDD's and SSD's?

sounds very "in-between" for me...

[qwerty_lesh]

Still, they rely on heads, so if the HRD suffers excessive shock, the heads will be ruined, especially if one is reading or writing, once a single head is damaged, consider that out of that sector, there will be multiple cylinders which are no longer read/writable, and who knows how it would function with a few bad heads, if the read/write rates get crippled or if its able to effectively function with bad heads out of use.
These will be a data recovery experts worst nightmare I bet, I do hope these are as promising as the pictures state, high speed, cheap, large storage, my god, if it were true you would just buy like six and raid 0 +1 them together and never have to worry about speed/performance or capacity for a very long time.

[nemesis.ie]

This tech was being touted 1 or 2 years ago. Is it nearly ready to hit the stores would be question I would ask?

It would be great to see it out soon as the more competition (faster speeds/density) the better the pricing should be.

[peach1971]

I´ve heard about this technology about FIVE YEARS ago (I swear!) and I was wondering when anything new about this would appear in the media. Aha, finally in 2009...

[DanishDevil]

I'll take a Zune HD with a side of nVidia Tegra, multitouch, OLED, and a 200GB HRD please

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by DanishDevil

I'll take a Zune HD with a side of nVidia Tegra, multitouch, OLED, and a 200GB HRD please

you forgot wireless N w/ wireless HDMI

[DanishDevil]

Well luckily, it will have WiFi (G most likely) and HDMI through a dock, but other than the HRD, everything is confirmed as specs for the 16GB starting between $250 and $300. But this is a thread about the confuzzling HRDs. I'm just saying if these prove to be the true HDD killers, they would be GREAT in portable media players

[Suijin]

Originally Posted by Black Hades

It states on their site:
"A diamond solid lubricant coating protects the surfaces for years of worry free service"
It cant be a paste because nothing is more abrasive as loose diamond particles. That's what they coat on power cutting tool blades. Kind of not the effect one would want on a sensitive magnetic media.
Also even if on a molecular level the diamond coating is perfectly plane, heat still occurs because of fast moving tangent surfaces. Where there's heat there's entropy.

Diamond as a material property has one of the lowest friction surfaces known. Diamond also has one of the highest heat conductivities known. Also a very good electrical insulator, and it's opne the the hardest materials also.

It does have drawbacks of course: It's expensive to make, and it generally requires high temperatures to deposit which is often bad for what you to put it on and can cause high stress in the material at room temperature.

[Sasqui]

Originally Posted by Black Hades

Well I guess you CAN reinvent the wheel after all

EDIT:


It still vibrates, the media platter moves, and more than before it's in direct contact with lubricant solid matter...that concerns me because there is no such thing as 0% friction and heat and wear and tear could still occur. But what do I know I'm not an engineer.

I hope it doesnt hum or even worse buzz

With 1 head per sector? Yes, it's a good idea from a performance perspective, but I see too many moving parts. I'd be surprised if this becomes reality, and if it does... it won't be like sliced bread.

[Easo]

I would want one working example...

[Kantastic]

This is some amazing stuff. It looks quite promising, can't wait until it's on the Egg. ^_^

[Mussels]

in the fourth picture they say "HDD reliability or better"

[MopeyMartian]

Originally Posted by Suijin

Diamond as a material property has one of the lowest friction surfaces known. Diamond also has one of the highest heat conductivities known. Also a very good electrical insulator, and it's opne the the hardest materials also.

It does have drawbacks of course: It's expensive to make, and it generally requires high temperatures to deposit which is often bad for what you to put it on and can cause high stress in the material at room temperature.

A couple years ago I read about a new technique for making synthetic diamonds that is supposed to be drastically cheaper than traditional methods. I wonder if that is the process being used in this case.

I could be mistaken, but isn't there a diamond based TIM on the market?

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by MopeyMartian

I could be mistaken, but isn't there a diamond based TIM on the market?

there is. but its performance is pretty crap compared to the good pastes, like AS5 and MX2.

[ShadowFold]

Finally. Something afordable that can beat my Seagate 7200.10RPM I really hope the high capacity ones are cheap!!!!

[KieranD]

i dont care what it is or how it works just that it loads my data faster and transfer rates are much improved because data is getting larger and it needs to keep up with speeds

SSD is just a huge SD card lol maybe not exactly the same but same principles

i want programs to load faster and load times in programs reduced

someone explain how it works is it like hundreds of heads reading or something?

[Mussels]

Originally Posted by KieranD

i dont care what it is or how it works just that it loads my data faster and transfer rates are much improved because data is getting larger and it needs to keep up with speeds

SSD is just a huge SD card lol maybe not exactly the same but same principles

i want programs to load faster and load times in programs reduced

someone explain how it works is it like hundreds of heads reading or something?

the only way i can comprehend it, is that instead of one large circle, you get lots of small squares. many many heads that dont move (say, 16 per 'platter') - they dont cover the whole area, but with the platter being able to move small amounts each one covers enough area that the whole thing can be read in one combination or another.

get enough of em together, and you can read massive amounts of data simultaneously.

seriously, i could be totally tripping on this. its rather late/early in the morning here.

[Perra]

Wow, cool tech but it still remains to be seen how well it works. I sure hope it can live up to the numbers they tout and that it gets a reasonable price.

[thebeephaha]

Originally Posted by ShadowFold

Finally. Something afordable that can beat my Seagate 7200.10RPM I really hope the high capacity ones are cheap!!!!

Yea but almost anything now beats a 7200.10 on the cheap...