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

Found this when researching about magnets vs hard drives, found it quite hilarious (and informative to those who haven't heard about the soon-to-come move to perpendicular storage).

OH GOD NO NOT AGAIN

I didn't even watch it this time and now the song is stuck in my head.

DAMN YOU CM

AAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHHAHAHA! THE WORLD IS MIIINE!

Saw it several months ago when the news about perpindicular storage first came out. Supposedly, the first notebook perpindicular hard disk is already out, coming in at 160GB.

So, Disco is the solution to all data corruption problems?

Yes, of course.

It's not data corruption, it's increased storage capacity.

The increased storage capacity was only previously hindered by data corruption. It's two-fold actually. Toshiba released its first perpendicular hard drive recently. It aims to make a perpendicular data storage device it its 1.8" formfactor as well, which means REALLY REALLY REALLY big iPods.

Well yea, but it doesn't eliminate the data corruption that occurs on our harddrives now.

I don't get it.

Was that drawn and/or animated by the people that made school house rock?

Yup. We're talking 300 gig iPods easily being feasible. I don't really care though--I'm waiting for 30 gig Flash-based players for like 300--then I'll be ecstatic. Better battery, lighter weight, smaller and less corruption.

I was wondering the same thing :p

But does this mean the price of perpendicular HDD's are going to be extremely high because with the data stored differently, won't you need an even finer laser to read the data?

It would if harddrives used lasers...

Harddrives use heads--not lasers--which hover a few millimeters off the platter and read the data. All it's gonna take is rerouting the heads in a different way.

OK, I thought harddrives used lasers to read data like CDs. I didn't know.

Now you know.

And knowing is half the battle.

That's why magnetism is involved.

is it just me, or is anyone else remembering the "amendment to be" cartoon from the simpsons. (or, for those old enough, the thing that it was parodying)

What would you do with a 300 gig ipod? I've only got about 15 gigs of music. I know people who have loads but not that much!

*Surrenders to perpendicular overlords.*

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]Harddrives use heads--not lasers--which hover a few millimeters off the platter and read the data. All it's gonna take is rerouting the heads in a different way.[/QUOTE]

It's not even a few millimeters, its about a millimeter. And they're built to withstand contact with the disc, with a special coating so that neither the head nor the disc is damaged. (Of course, this coating only lasts so long, about 50,000 contacts)

The head is actually held up by the air current from the spinning disc more than the mount holding it in place.

When the drive shuts down and boots up, the heads are actually touching the disc, until the drive spins up enough to lift the head off the disc. When the drive is new, this happens quickly, but as the drive ages, it takes longer for the motor to speed up enough. Thus, the failrate for a drive tends to grow more along an exponential path rather than linear, as the drive grows older.

Newer drives tend not to have as much issue with this, because they lock their heads in a place where they do not touch the disc (generally the ones with anti-shock protection). While these still tend to touch the disc as the drive becomes older, they do reduce the wear on the drive while it is new.

Everyone remembers Bill from School House Rock. And if you don't, you should be shot on sight.

movies, ebooks, uncompressed formats (pure wav, flac, whatever) for sexed up sound, better software, etc.

Doesn't this mean we could have graphics cards with gigs of memory on them? Furthermore, wouldn't this technology make PCs significantly cheaper?

It would if video cards had hard drives on them.

Didn't you watch the movie!

There will be a big grey thing shooting arrows through the bits!

Duh, ram is different than HD memory. Ignore me.

Technically we already can--it's just that the memory is so damn expensive and the gain (at the moment) isn't worth them oney. Give it a year I'd say, at the most, and you'll start seeing 1 gig of GDDR3 (or will it be GDDR4 by then?) on video cards.