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Lasers will increase HDD speed 100 times

Oct 11, 2007
Today is the era of optical data carriers. Floppy discs and other magnetic carriers are forced out by USB flash drives, compact discs, DVD and even Blu Ray. But there is one part of your computer that always remains magnetic. It is your Hard Disc. There are many pluses in its magnetic origin, i.e. magnetic drives are much cheaper than flash-based. But, there is one huge flaw – speed. Access time of flash memory is much shorter than in usual hard disc drives. But modern technologies made a huge step in solving this problem.

Scientists of Radbout University Nijmegen made a true marvelous invention. Usually, need a magnet to change the magnetic polarity of a metal. That's how modern hard discs work. But scientists thought of a way to change polarity with laser impulses. Each laser impulse makes the information layer on the disk surface to change its value, from 0 to 1 and vice versa. This invention increased speed of hard disc in about hundred times! But there is one limitation – density of recording is much smaller than that of standard magnetic method. This is because area, which is affected by laser, is about 5 um large. In next 3-4 years scientists hope to reach the 10 nm plank, then these laser-based hard discs can truly compete with magnetic ones.

Computer technologies improve every day. And things that earlier were thought impossible now are reality.

Lasers have played a huge role in the advancement of laptop computer technology.  From hard disk scanning to laser printers, their inherent value is clear.  Even refurbished notebooks can be modified to include this technology.
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» posted by: Puritan / Oct 15, 2007 05:00 AM
u lil kids forget about Australia,"A.K.A. "the lucky country" give it time,it seems like all u lil kids r frightened by console power, so cool down,buy a cheap quad and a generic 8800,and laugh,coz u r now a true gamer,and if u really don't have enuff ram,well buy sweet hdrive +controller...or raid
» posted by: Xiu / Oct 14, 2007 02:41 PM
That sounds pretty awesome; makes me wonder how long it will take for laser drives to become mainstream.

Slightly off-topic, but the article's choppy sentences were sort of annoying, though.
» posted by: Md / Oct 14, 2007 12:05 PM
hahahah we dutch are the best cause here taking shrooms or smoking weed is not illigal .. first groundbreaking research about human consciousness and NDE and now this .. hahah i laugh at you fuckers in america and say it's a free country.. then i light my spliff and think about all the innocent bastards who smoked a little shit and are now in prisis without a reason !! you will soon see.. we start the revolution, the dutch find a way.. the rest follows.
» posted by: John / Oct 14, 2007 11:48 AM
Dead tech is not an issue, it is another way of doing things. Even if it fails miserably to compete with the other offerings, they will start a price war and force magnetics to advance by competition. Always good.
» posted by: Unknown / Oct 14, 2007 09:31 AM
Sounds like dead end tech. 3-4 years is plenty of time for solid state drives to develop.
» posted by: Jeff / Oct 12, 2007 11:46 PM
I hope they will make this work faster, cause i want it now!
» posted by: Johnson / Oct 12, 2007 09:06 PM
3-4 years? Good, should be ready for the next gen consoles. I look forward to see further developements.

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