Harddrive news. /drool

[epicstruggle]

http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/04/17/segate_announces_cheetah_perpendicular/

Seagate will announce on Tuesday the industry's first 3.5" hard drive that is based on perpendicular recording technology. Targeting enterprise applications, the new Cheetah 15K.5 doubles the capacity of its predecessor and promises 30% more performance.

Compared to the preceding non-perpendicular 15K.4 generation, which has been offered in 36 GB, 73 GB and 146 GB versions, the new 15K.5 is available with 300 GB (four platters), 147 GB (two platters) and 73 GB (one platter). The sustained data transfer rate is up about 30% from 58-96 MB/s in the 15K.4 to about 73-125 MB/s in the 15K.5. Seagate claims that the new Cheetah is the first hard drive to break the 100 MB/s data transfer barrier.

AND
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1042069&highlight=perpendicular
Soon we will see 750 GB and 960 GB.

epic

 

[nutball]

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1042069&highlight=perpendicularSoon we will see 750 GB and 960 GB.

Now this is interesting. Hard drive capacities have been in something of the doldrums for the past ... I dunno 18-24 months (or maybe it's just my memory!). I'll be looking to buy some major storage for a project at work some time next year ... 1TB drives would be just the ticket!

 

[Sxotty]

I would rather Seagate made something akin to the raptor so I did not have to buy an expensive controller as well.

Imagine this on the SATA2 interface that would be one sweet drive. I am constantly amazed that all the other companies let WD have that market all to themselves. Perhaps they view it as the Airbus vs. Boeing fight, that the market cannot sustain more than one player in that niche. (The niche for the airliners is the super jumbo some say if both enter they both lose money.)

It seems to me though there would be plenty of room for another player, though margins would take a hit.

I had 2x10k rpm scsi drives before I moved to the raptor though and have no desire to go back to 7200 rpm drives. The perpindicular recording is cool though. Can all the manufacturers do this? Or is it patented to death?

 

[Tahir2]

The newer 150GB Raptor's haven't been selling that strongly where I work - possibly price but mainly down to the fact that most people would rather have huge amounts of storage than downright speed in a hard drive.
The Raptor is seen as a luxury item, more like Concorde rather than a jumbo jet in your analogy Sxotty.

 

[poopypoo]

The perpindicular recording is cool though. Can all the manufacturers do this? Or is it patented to death?

IF my memory serves correctly, perpendicular recording isn't patented to death, but it's not technologically "in the bag" for everyone just yet, either. Afaik only Toshiba have released perpendicular recording HDDs, though I thought I remembered reading that IBM had actually cracked the nut first -- not sure if they released any products based on it though. I'm not very knowledgeable on this though -- just what I remember reading in various press releases over the last year or so.

 

[Sxotty]

The newer 150GB Raptor's haven't been selling that strongly where I work - possibly price but mainly down to the fact that most people would rather have huge amounts of storage than downright speed in a hard drive.
The Raptor is seen as a luxury item, more like Concorde rather than a jumbo jet in your analogy Sxotty.

A super jumbo is very expensive and not many are likely to be sold, that was the point of the analogy. Only Airbus is making such a plane.

 

[doob]

Holographic storage is also in development, and it promises higher densities.
Im wondering if some companies will adopt that technology instead, or just explore and stretch magnetic perpendicular storage capabilities.

Im also wondering wich might be fast, im more inclined to holographic storage, since light travels faster than needdles switching magnetic poles, but thats just my first impression, might have some drawbacks, im just guessing.

 

[Guden Oden]

Unfortunately, holographic tech, or at least the implementations thereof that I have seen or read about so far, is not solid-state. As there will be mechanical components and movement involved, it's likely that access times will be at least as slow as today's disk-based storage. In fact it may be worse as a harddrive uses a balanced pivoting arm, while it would be very difficult to provide an equally balanced movement for a holographic system... Anyway, that's stuff to figure out to solve for people that are smarter than me, so I won't say anything for sure on this subject!

 

[Frank]

IMB already made those perpendicular recording disks (they invented it a few years ago), which you can buy from Hitachi in various flavours. But at the moment you just get a smaller drive for the same price.

Competition is tight in that market, so the best bit about Samsung being able to do it is, that prices might drop a bit.

 

[epicstruggle]

http://www.engadget.com/2006/04/21/seagate-leaks-750gb-barracuda-7200-10/

 

[PeterAce]

On Google the 'I'm Feeling Luck' search for 'perpendicular storage' gets you this amusing animation on perpendicular storage:

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/research/recording_head/pr/PerpendicularAnimation.html

 

[zsouthboy]

On Google the 'I'm Feeling Luck' search for 'perpendicular storage' gets you this amusing animation on perpendicular storage:

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/research/recording_head/pr/PerpendicularAnimation.html

That kicked ass!

 

[epicstruggle]

750's are being shipped.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1047527

Hope that the 960's start shipping very soon.

epic

 

[KimB]

Makes me wonder when the next drive size error is going to crop up for Windows?

 

[epicstruggle]

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/skusearch.hmx?SCriteria=AA46350&CartID=done&nextloc=
750gp for $480

not bad.

 

[Guden Oden]

Damn, I want the minute and a half I wasted watching that idiotic animation back please. Grrr.

 

[epicstruggle]

http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200605/kt2006050116405310160.htm

Samsung Electronics and Microsoft will next month show off the ready-to-market version of a hybrid hard drive (HHD) which can greatly reduce boot-up time of laptops and desktop PCs.


The new product will be introduced along with Microsoft’s Windows ReadyDrive feature at the U.S. software maker’s annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference on May 24 in Seattle. ReadyDrive refers to software technology that supports the HHD.
The HHD is the convergence of a flash memory chip and a conventional platter-type magnetic disk drive. To save the time and energy spent spinning a metal disk drive it is designed to use static flash memory when starting a PC,.


Samsung and Microsoft have been co-developing the product and revealed the first prototype at the same conference last year. But this year’s model will be almost identical with what will be sold in the market later this year, though the basic concept of the product was unchanged, Samsung said on Monday.


``This one will be more fitted to Windows Vista as Microsoft plans to release the new operating system within this year. We have tailored the hybrid disk to Windows Vista,’’ said Samsung’s public relations official Lee Seung-han.

 

[Sxotty]

I am not particularly impressed with the hybrid drives as I fear for reliability since the flash memory can only be written a small number of times.

If they finally worked it out so you could save a stable configuration in there and then turn it on to boot everytime that would be nice, but otherwise I don't see the point. The info I read before sounded kind of silly.