[NEWS] - Maxtor validates 175GB platters.

[CougTek]

Maxtor Corporation (NYSE: MXO), a worldwide leader in hard disk drives, announced today that its wholly owned subsidiary, MMC Technology Inc., demonstrated its new perpendicular recording medium (PMR) disk manufacturing process which delivers production costs similar to today's longitudinal recording media.

[blablablablabal]

MMC is able to leverage the same equipment used to produce today's longitudinal media (LMR) with only an incremental cost of material due to the development of its new thick soft underlayer (SUL) magnetic material structure. This structure reduces the SUL required for efficient writing from 400 nm to as thin as 100 nm, does not require extra sputtering machines and can be produced at the same throughput as LMR. MMC's existing equipment can also accommodate the increased complexity associated with future PMR media that requires additional metallic layers.

[blablablablabal]

MMC media is capable of up to a 175 GB/platter density using advanced developmental PMR heads. This achievement is a result of decreasing grain sizes from today's LMR grains at 8 nm to an average of 6 nm in diameter. In addition, the MMC team reduced the recording layer-to-SUL spacing, resulting in continued improvements in signal to noise ratio and bit error rates.

The key question here is "when will I be able to buy it?"

And no, the key answer isn't "when I'll finally get a well-paid job".

News source

 

[Mercutio]

MMMmmm 525GB of Maxliney goodness.

 

[Jan Kivar]

I hope they can cope with more than two platters...

Jan

 

[zx]

I hope they can cope with one !

 

[jtr1962]

I tend to think we're not too far from the death of the three-platter drive. Still, I would also like to see a three-platter version of this drive. Even a 2-platter version is great-350 GB.

 

[Mercutio]

No. It's ONLY 350GB. 30GB larger than the biggest MaxLine now.
700GB... now that would be sexy. Especially @ 7200rpm+.

I believe that falls into the "dream on" category but maybe we'll get lucky.

 

[Fushigi]

C'mon guys, make the form-factor a 1/2 height vs. a 1" and you could probably get 6 platters in there. Now you've got the first terabyte drive.

 

[Mercutio]

Half-height and larger drives are kind of a PITA in desktop cases.

Besides, how many of those half-height 180GB SCSI monsters has Seagate sold?

 

[Fushigi]

Minitowers and up all have at leave two 1/2-height bays: 1 for an optical, 1 for a TB of disk. Or just make it take up 2 slots in a normal 3.5 enclosure (position the mounting screws appropriately). The only chassis' that would be problematic are micro style or proprietary and those aren't typically going to be interested in a TB of online storage.

There are tradeoffs to everything. If you want a TB of disk that fits in the palm of your hand, you have to give up something.

 

[Mercutio]

I was refering to the 3.5 to 5.25 adaptors that a lot of cases would have to use to fit in a HH hard disk. I can do without a floppy, but since a lot of cases only have 2 3.5" bays, I think a lot of other people might have a problem with that.

 

[jtr1962]

C'mon guys, make the form-factor a 1/2 height vs. a 1" and you could probably get 6 platters in there. Now you've got the first terabyte drive.

Nice idea but I doubt Maxtor or anyone else would be able to get six platters of that density to work well together. Two-stage sliders would be one way, but I don't see that happening any time soon. Besides, the cost per GB for a 6-platter drive would be way more than for a 2-platter one. I'd love to see it, but somehow I don't think even a 4-platter version will see the light of day.

 

[Buck]

Just imagine the cost: 6 platters and 12 heads! Hooley Dooley.

 

[fool]

Just imagine the cost: 6 platters and 12 heads! Hooley Dooley.

but in one drive, rather than
9 platters and 18 heads in four 250GB maxline II/+IIs

still I take your point that it would be a long way from free, or even cheap.

 

[CougTek]

And I suppose many of you would buy such a drive, huh? Certainly, since it would only cost something like 1500$-2000$ a piece. Get real, there's no market right now for a TeraByte hard disk drive.

You won't see >300GB drives until current +300GB start to sell in resonable volume. But seeing how their cosst is still prohibitive (meaning they have no volume), don't expect it to happen tomorrow.

Currently, 175GB per platter designs would be limited to single and dual platter drives, period.

 

[Mercutio]

I have three MaxLine IIs already. I don't see why I would stop buying big drives.

 

[CougTek]

You're not part of the maintream customers either and the small group from which you are part cannot currently generate enough revenue to incite the manufacturers to continue to push for bigger capacities for their new drives.

You'll have to wait for the crowd to slowly follow.

 

[Handruin]

Half-height and larger drives are kind of a PITA in desktop cases.

Besides, how many of those half-height 180GB SCSI monsters has Seagate sold?

Well, if you were to visit my work, you would see they sold a ton of them.

 

[Fushigi]

Sure, few consumers have use for a TB drive -- at least until the next version of MS Office is released. :lol: But I think it would have appeal in the corporate market. Petabyte arrays are not far off and drives such as this would be a natural. Much of the corporate market is about dense storage that uses less power & generates less heat. A rack full of 7200RPM TB SATA drives with a nice caching RAID controller would satisfy the average mid-sized company's entire storage needs.

Heck, my company's storage needs could be reduced from about 3 racks to about 12Us. Think of the power, heat, and space savings. Well worth a premium up-front price. Even more so since we pay for space at a co-lo.

These drives would be an ideal front-end in a backup strategy that involves disk-to-disk-to-tape. Although considering how fast some tape drives are getting to be the disk intermediate may not be necessary much longer (thinks of our Ultrium2s that do 200GB/hour).