Laser hard drives some day?

[Handruin]

A way to use light to change the polarity of a magnet. Laser hard drives some day?.

Although both major challenges have been solved, Stanciu still believes that it will take the industry approximately 5 more years before we can actually see commercial laser-hard drive hybrids. Even with the cheap picosecond lasers existing today, a laser hard drive could reach a phenomenal speed of about 1 TBits/s. In comparison, a top of the line hard drive today can reach a data transfer rate of about 1GBits/s, and advanced solid state flash drives can reach about 2-3 times that speed. In the more distant future femtosecond based laser drives could potentially reach unimaginable speeds of up to 100TBits/s and beyond.

 

[MaxBurn]

Interesting, but I was thinking we would hit holographic memory before this.

 

[mubs]

I fervently wish that this does come to fruition.

 

[Handruin]

The holographic seems viable also but I thought it was mainly a worm media, no? The performance possibilities of this laser approach (given they can perfect it) as a storage medium might be faster and more stable because they can manage the storage without spinning any media. It's too early to tell, but at the very least I thought it was neat they could change the magnetic pole using a laser. That has to be useful for other things?

 

[timwhit]

Can they read the magnetic pole using the laser?

 

[Handruin]

It doesn't say anything about reading the data via the laser which is a good question. I poorly made the assumption that they could.

 

[jtr1962]

If there's no spinning platter then they have to be using a laser to read data. As to whether or not this will be viable, and when, who knows? 5 years is an eternity in the computer business. Who knows what speeds SSDs will be capable of by then, especially if they're interfaced directly to the chipset? Regardless of how it's done, it'll be nice to finally get rid of spinning disks.

 

[LunarMist]

How would this drive not use rotating media?

 

[Bozo]

A moving laser?

 

[timwhit]

The whole idea seems pretty far fetched. I think the future is here and it's the SSD.

 

[P5-133XL]

If the powers that be can get holographic storage mass produced, it will be a very long time before SSD's will be able to compete at those capacities. All these technologies have their own benefits and drawbacks. My point is that there is room for all types and it is best to simply let the market and the end user determine what's optimum for him or her.

 

[udaman]

How would this drive not use rotating media?

click(read/comprehend), ^^^link?

 

[udaman]

Interesting, but I was thinking we would hit holographic memory before this.

so did a lot of people, a decade ago. So did a lot of people think OLED would be here already with large size screens...still only prototypes...long way from ideas >>> to production product. Most don't make it. survival of the fittest (or best marketing/corporate pull)?

 

[sechs]

The whole idea seems pretty far fetched. I think the future is here and it's the SSD.

It's not so much far-fetched as seemingly impractical.

It's not going to beat SSDs on speed. And when it comes out, I don't see how it's going to beat spinning disks on price. No one is going to plonk down a bunch of money for 1/3 the speed or half the capacity.

It may find a niche, but, unless there some amazing development, this is unlikely to be a mainstream storage system.