Hard Rectangular Drive Could be the Hard Disk Answer to SSDs

[ShadowFold]

But not enough to make me upgrade

 

[TheLaughingMan]

I'm in

When does this come out. It sounds all great and stuff, but unless this is due to come out in the next year or so, SSD will be cheap enough (hopefully) by then to compete price wise.....which will create competition making everything cheaper and better.

This is getting good.

 

[LittleLizard]

i wonder what would happen if 1 head get broke by, lets say, vibration or a fall.

 

[Cuzza]

i wonder what would happen if 1 head get broke by, lets say, vibration or a fall.

I'd say the area that head addresses is gone. For good. Better hope it's nothing important. Mind you, that's what RAID is for.

 

[GunsAblazin]

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

LOL they pretty much did reinvent the wheel. The platters are made of glass so there's verry little friction or heat. I don't understand why they had to be in contact in the first place.

Technically if they added more heads to a standard HDD and slowed down the motor, that should have the same result - with less friction. All they really need is a way to replace the motor which is primarily what fails.

 

[TheLaughingMan]

0% friction and heat and wear and tear could still occur

Well yeah. That is true for everything including SSD. While it may seem strange that their is physical contact within the drive, but we are talking about "Rectangular" Disk Drives. This was some strange stuff from the beginning. I am sure they had some kind of reason for doing it the way they did it.

Technically if they added more heads to a standard HDD

I am not sure, please correct if I am wrong, but I think they tried that at some point. Adding extra heads created, more heat, more power consumption, and increased risk of head crashes and mechanical failures. I believe developers like Seagate, WD, etc. developed other ways to increase performance and reduce friction.

 

[Steevo]

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.

Same thing they said about perp drives, and heat drives, however they are fast reliable, and cheap now.

LOL they pretty much did reinvent the wheel. The platters are made of glass so there's verry little friction or heat. I don't understand why they had to be in contact in the first place.

Technically if they added more heads to a standard HDD and slowed down the motor, that should have the same result - with less friction. All they really need is a way to replace the motor which is primarily what fails.

No, usually it is the platter media, the heads, or the PCB and related components. I have only seen one really old IBM drive die from spindle motor failure. Many from heads being damaged, or from lightning and or power surges taking out the heads, and a few from the PCB and or related components being fried.


When the HDD is spinning the heads float on a airfoil surface that is near frictionless, it is the contaminants, bumps, drops, and the startup and shutdown that damages and wears out heads, and causes damage to the disk itself.

 

[1c3d0g]

They can't "outspeed" a chip. Ever. SSD's will crush whatever hard disk (or hard disk-type media) someone invents in the future. Let's face it, the time has come to bury unreliable magnetic media once and for all. This announcement is nothing more than hype from desperate hard disk companies, unwilling to change for the better.

 

[alexp999]

They can't "outspeed" a chip. Ever. SSD's will crush whatever hard disk (or hard disk-type media) someone invents in the future. Let's face it, the time has come to bury unreliable magnetic media once and for all. This announcement is nothing more than hype from desperate hard disk companies, unwilling to change for the better.

I'm interested to know why you think magnetic media cannot ever "outspeed" a chip as you put it.

Are you an SSD/HDD/HRD engineer perhaps?

 

[tkpenalty]

I'm interested to know why you think magnetic media cannot ever "outspeed" a chip as you put it.

Are you an SSD/HDD/HRD engineer perhaps?

Electrical signals move at the speed of light, while for a hdd/hrd to move it's platter into the read head's position is nowhere near that speed.

Doesn't take much common sense to figure that one out.

 

[alexp999]

Electrical signals move at the speed of light, while for a hdd/hrd to move it's platter into the read head's position is nowhere near that speed.

Doesn't take much common sense to figure that one out.

We still cant predict the future or where technology will take us.

Why cant there be some invention that can read magnetically recorded data faster than a chip?

Its good to keep your mind open

Oh and for the record electricity moves really slow take the following from wiki as an example:

As a numerical example,for a copper wire of 1 square mm area, carrying a current of 3 amperes, the drift velocity of electrons would be about 0.00028 metres per second (or just about an hour to travel one metre).

 

[Mussels]

Electrical signals move at the speed of light, while for a hdd/hrd to move it's platter into the read head's position is nowhere near that speed.

Doesn't take much common sense to figure that one out.

electrical signals move at the speed of electricity. optical signals move at the speed of light.

 

[Perra]

They can't "outspeed" a chip. Ever. SSD's will crush whatever hard disk (or hard disk-type media) someone invents in the future. Let's face it, the time has come to bury unreliable magnetic media once and for all. This announcement is nothing more than hype from desperate hard disk companies, unwilling to change for the better.

You're probably right but until SSD's come down to a more reasonable price-level, I'm all for this kind of stuff. Can probably be a perfect stepping-stone from HDD to SSD.

If it ever gets to stores that is

 

[Mussels]

SSD's may be able to be faster in access times, but these things appear to be winning already in throughput and IOPS.

who cares if they get overtaken - you wouldnt stop buying Nvidia just because AMD released ONE video card that was faster, once... you choose whats best AT THE TIME.

 

[naram-sin]

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

I guess that they are referring to MTBF, most likely.

 

[deaffob]

jesus look at the power consumtion

 

[zads]

Magnetic hard drives will not be replaced by SSDs for the long foreseeable future.
The capacity/$ will never be competitive for SSDs.
This is an industry consensus, and one that I agree upon (and I'm in charge of the SSD line at my company).
SSDs have their place in high performance systems, hard drives have their place in high capacity systems.
While this idea HRD is interesting, it will be a number of years before even a workable solution comes out.

electrical signals move at the speed of electricity. optical signals
move at the speed of light.

electric fields propogate at the speed of light.

...
Oh and for the record electricity moves really slow take the following from wiki as an example:

As a numerical example,for a copper wire of 1 square mm area, carrying a current of 3 amperes, the drift velocity of electrons would be about 0.00028 metres per second (or just about an hour to travel one metre).

Careful now, the drift velocity of electrons is not equal to the "speed of electricity"...
Electric field propogates at the speed of light (through the wire almost instantaneously)
Without getting into the electron physics, just imagine the wire is a pipe filled with water..

The electric field corollary would be water pressure.
Turn on the light switch (open the water valve), and the electrons start flowing almost immediately through the entire pipe (the water pressure pushes the standing water out the end of the pipe pre-filled with water almost immediately).

So here's a thought question:
If the drift velocity of electrons is 1m/hour, why doesn't it take 4 hours to turn on the light bulb from your light switch?



Answer?
Because the wire isn't empty- the copper atoms are already "filled with electrons", just like a filled water pipe.

 

[hat]

Electricity is pretty fast... ever seen lightning?

Regular hard drives are better atm because they offer much more space per dollar than SSDs. There is one 512GB SSD on newegg for $1575. Or, for $240, you could buy the 2TB Western Digital drive... or for $480 get two and use RAID 1 for data redundancy

 

[alexp999]

Magnetic hard drives will not be replaced by SSDs for the long foreseeable future.
The capacity/$ will never be competitive for SSDs.
This is an industry consensus, and one that I agree upon (and I'm in charge of the SSD line at my company).
SSDs have their place in high performance systems, hard drives have their place in high capacity systems.
While this idea HRD is interesting, it will be a number of years before even a workable solution comes out.




electric fields propogate at the speed of light.



Careful now, the drift velocity of electrons is not equal to the "speed of electricity"...
Electric field propogates at the speed of light (through the wire almost instantaneously)
Without getting into the electron physics, just imagine the wire is a pipe filled with water..

The electric field corollary would be water pressure.
Turn on the light switch (open the water valve), and the electrons start flowing almost immediately through the entire pipe (the water pressure pushes the standing water out the end of the pipe pre-filled with water almost immediately).

So here's a thought question:
If the drift velocity of electrons is 1m/hour, why doesn't it take 4 hours to turn on the light bulb from your light switch?



Answer?
Because the wire isn't empty- the copper atoms are already "filled with electrons", just like a filled water pipe.

Yes I was taught that analogy, it still doesnt change the "speed" of electricity

 

[Hayder_Master]

so other chance for physical drives

 

[theeldest]

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.

There would be fewer moving parts than a traditional HDD because the read heads don't move, and the platter oscillates instead of rotating.

Also you won't need to worry about the heads floating above the platter and damaging the data if they touch because the heads are always directly contacting the platter.

And you don't need to worry about that stupid torque on the left side of your laptop when your HDD is running.


I think that the trick here would be to get two oscillating platters in a disc. If they oscillate opposite each other, there's no net momentum. And if we can speed everything up to about 30khz, you won't hear a thing (unless you've got freakishly good hearing that is)