The Future Of Digital Storage Discussion

[Jakeway]

I don?t really know why I am posting this? its just general amazement. Pc power is always doubling, and you can never have enough I know. But I am always really impressed by what man has made.

Anywayz about two years ago a friend of mine showed me a link to a mini HD in the making that could hold 4gb and was about the size of a 2p piece. Very impressive I thought, think how great that would be in a mobiles phone. Today I saw a picture of a mini HDD (as seen below) on a different forum. The poster said that he herd it was going to be 80gb but couldn?t find a link to prove it? so I started googling and found some other stuff. (links below)



80GB mini HDD - 1,000 GB DVD - Half Terabyte HDD


These storages capacities and sizes are amazing.

[Number45]

Hard drives are prone enough to mechanical failure as it is, I can see their reliability dropping massively when the sizes get down that far. It's about time a serious alternative appeared that offers mass storage, fast access times and no mechanical parts.

Static RAM was a step in the right direction, but the price was never going to be feasible at the time. I did read something recently about new optical media with lightning quick access times, so maybe that's the way forward.

[killy]

How about 2 terabytes on a memory card the size of a postage stamp http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20040805A4013.html

[Jakeway]

Hard drives are prone enough to mechanical failure as it is, I can see their reliability dropping massively when the sizes get down that far. It's about time a serious alternative appeared that offers mass storage, fast access times and no mechanical parts.

I imagine in the future it will evolve into something similar to the human brain. A small tank of oil that is full of optic fibres? but that is the future.

For now this is what we have to work with, and when you compare these new drives to the drives of 25 years ago that had fifty, two foot diameter disks and only held five MB, its very impressive? don?t you think?

[Number45]

I'm not saying it's not impressive, just that it needs to change. Similar to that link killy posted really, memory sticks are starting to answer the questions in terms of quantity but they're still lagging on transfer speeds.

Technology companies have been looking for an alternative for countless years, but in the end they can't find anything that provides all the answers so they just make things smaller.

[Super Stu]

Hmm, a discussion along those lines was in New Scientist a good few years back. Picture we crytals, sort of like in an LCD, only it's a 3d cube lattice of them. Lasers on three sides are obviously able to pin point any xyz coord inside the cube, and the crytals get turned on and off somehow. I dunno, my memory (heh) on it is hazy, but there was this kind of bio (wait, I remember now... twas some sort of bio gel) that could replace memory in future, as the capacity was nuts.

Meanwhile, tuppence 80gig hdds will have to suffice.

[charlaph]

Nanotechnology should blow this stuff out of the water - 1 terabyte/sq inch for starters. Don't know how far off it is, but I've been reading about it for aaaages. http://www.azonano.com/details.asp?ArticleID=884

[Ciaran]

http://www.vnunet.com/news/1160309

http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20050104_142527.html

[nips]

Bump:

It seems we're edging ever closer. BBC just put this up:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/4276509.stm