HDD capacity stagnation

[Arno]

Of course I did ask for some kind of specifics. I don't know how it could
be ambiguous to anyone familiar with the history of the rate of growth in
capacity.

It is not. But platter density has been staganating for some
time now and doubling is way in the past.

Arno

 

[Lynn McGuire]

Capacity seems to be progressing very slowly. We were stuck at 2TB for the
longest time (a lot longer than we were stuck at 528MB) but when the gates
opened we got 3TB, and not 8TB. Is there another obstacle?

What happened to the 10 TB holographic cubes
that we were suppose to get any day now ?

Lynn

 

[Tom Del Rosso]

What happened to the 10 TB holographic cubes
that we were suppose to get any day now ?

And bubble memories.

 

[Rod Speed]

Lynn McGuire wrote

Tom Del Rosso wrote

What happened to the 10 TB holographic cubes
that we were suppose to get any day now ?

Just another fantasy time wise.

 

[Arno]

What happened to the 10 TB holographic cubes
that we were suppose to get any day now ?
Lynn

Lost in hyperspace? I also remember something like 200TB
holographic tapes that never materialized. Seems progress
is still hard and incremental, mostly in small steps.

Arno

 

[Noob]

Lost in hyperspace? I also remember something like 200TB
holographic tapes that never materialized.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_data_storage

InPhase Technologies, after several announcements and subsequent
delays in 2006 and 2007, announced that it would soon be introducing
a flagship product. InPhase went out of business in February 2010 and
had its assets seized by the state of Colorado for back taxes.

Even though the site is still running...
http://www.inphase-technologies.com/

 

[Arno]

Arno wrote:

Even though the site is still running...
http://www.inphase-technologies.com/

Why am I not surprised. Most "revolutionary" technologies
never materialize. Some can later directly be identified
as fraud, others are just over-enthusiastic researchers
(which is unprofessional) or marketing people (where this
is expected of them).

Rule of thumb: If it looks to good to be true, it practically
always is.

Arno

 

[DevilsPGD]

Why am I not surprised. Most "revolutionary" technologies
never materialize. Some can later directly be identified
as fraud, others are just over-enthusiastic researchers
(which is unprofessional) or marketing people (where this
is expected of them).

Don't forget researchers who describe what they've got and what it might
mean with an appropriate level of enthusiasm who publish in an
appropriate venue with an equally appropriate level of enthusiasm. Works
fine until someone else writes a "next big thing" article as though the
research is ready for production and we'll see products in the next few
weeks.

Despite the technology for something existing, it's not necessarily
feasible to bring it to market (or even to package it up as a sellable
package without other pieces)

Imagine you design a read/write head for a hard drive that can work at
100,000rpm. All it takes is one idiot journalist to write up a "hard
drive speeds improving 10x-500x with new head" to fail to notice that
spinning platters at that speed isn't particularly feasible or practical
for a variety of other engineering reasons.

However, there are plenty of "revolutionary" technologies that we see
become evolutionary products. SSDs are a perfect example, we've had
flash drives for years, but only once all the pieces evolved did we
start to see practical primary storage.

 

[Arno]

In the last episode of <[email protected]>, Arno
<[email protected]> said:

Don't forget researchers who describe what they've got and what it might
mean with an appropriate level of enthusiasm who publish in an
appropriate venue with an equally appropriate level of enthusiasm. Works
fine until someone else writes a "next big thing" article as though the
research is ready for production and we'll see products in the next few
weeks.

Indeed. In this case the researcher may be enthusiastic because
"maybe in 50 years we will have this hard problem solved!!!",
which is perfectly fine to be enthusiastic for when you are
doing research.

Despite the technology for something existing, it's not necessarily
feasible to bring it to market (or even to package it up as a sellable
package without other pieces)

Or it may be demonstrable, but efficiency is just far, far too
bad. See, e.g., flying cars for normal people (not feasible
before fundamental breakthrough in both portable energy sources
and AI for steering)

Imagine you design a read/write head for a hard drive that can work at
100,000rpm. All it takes is one idiot journalist to write up a "hard
drive speeds improving 10x-500x with new head" to fail to notice that
spinning platters at that speed isn't particularly feasible or practical
for a variety of other engineering reasons.

Nice example!

However, there are plenty of "revolutionary" technologies that we see
become evolutionary products. SSDs are a perfect example, we've had
flash drives for years, but only once all the pieces evolved did we
start to see practical primary storage.

FLASH technology is about 25 years on the market now. EEPROM as
predecessor is older. Just not in sizes and at prices where using
them as ordinary storage made sense. We are there now and as soon
as the right cost ratio was reached, things exploded. But the first
lab demo is maybe 30-35 years in the past.

Arno

 

[DevilsPGD]

Nice example!

Doubly so because even if this phantom disk head only solves one of
several engineering problems, it is still a worthwhile step forward. If
it were cheap enough, might make 10,000rpm-15,000rpm drives more
practical for consumer/prosumer use overnight, so while the underlying
tech might be revolutionary, the resulting product will generally be
evolutionary.

That's not a bad thing, it's just important to remember when reading
hype styled articles.

FLASH technology is about 25 years on the market now. EEPROM as
predecessor is older. Just not in sizes and at prices where using
them as ordinary storage made sense. We are there now and as soon
as the right cost ratio was reached, things exploded. But the first
lab demo is maybe 30-35 years in the past.

Flash was potentially revolutionary when it was first invented but by
the time it hit the market as storage for general purpose computing, it
was just an evolutionary step forward from the on-market alternatives.

Remember the first USB key flash drives to hit the market? Thousands of
write cycles, no wear leveling, performance that beat out floppy drive
alternatives, but not by much, etc. It was only barely an evolutionary
step forward in terms of practical use when compared to a ZIP drive or
similar.

SSDs were just a series of small steps forward, densities increased,
reliability increased, production costs decreased, along with software
to cover over the rough edges (wear leveling, limited write cycles,
write reliability in general)

Each of those small steps could have been sensationalized in the media,
had anyone caught wind of one on a slow news day.

Still, many of the sensationalized stories have potential to be realized
over the long term.

 

[Franc Zabkar]

What happened to the 10 TB holographic cubes
that we were suppose to get any day now ?

Here's another one:

Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR):
http://kd63.seagatestorage.com/6A7EEB3777?elqPURLPage=4019&elq=767E7C6098DC4837964DF258F71C6625
http://hddscan.blogspot.com/2011/01/hamr-or-path-of-jedi.html

- Franc Zabkar