Hitachi Breakthrough Could Mean 4TB Disks By 2011

[Blue Velvet]

By developing new reading heads:

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies plans to announce Monday it has developed technology that will quadruple the storage capacity of desktop hard drives within the next two years.

The new reading-head technology will allow the company to cram more data on hard drives. Desktop computers could attain a capacity of 4TB of storage while laptop storage could reach 1TB, according to Hitachi.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,13...s/article.html


Meanwhile CNet is reporting that date to be 2011...

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, the hard drive arm of the Japanese conglomerate, has made what it says is the world's smallest read head for hard drives.

And, if it comes out in 2011 or so as expected, the head will allow Hitachi to continue to increase the density of drives, said John Best, Hitachi's CTO. Current top-of-the-line desktop drives hold a terabyte.

With the new, elegantly named current perpendicular-to-the-plane giant magneto-resistive heads (CPP-GMR heads to you laypeople), drive makers will be able to come out with 4 terabyte drives in 2011 and/or 1 terabyte notebook drives.

http://www.news.com/To-advance-drive...3-6213386.html

[dukebound85]

wow thats alot of stuff. i think we need blu ray or hd dvds so we can sort of back up to that media if we choose to. dvds are just too small these days

[xUKHCx]

1Tb in a laptop, that would be amazing look at the measly 80GB we get as standard in the MB

[twoodcc]

now this would be awesome! hopefully they come in 2009...the sooner the better.

[John Jacob]

Naaah, not good enough. I want 4TB LAPTOP drives in 2009.

No, that's still not good enough. I want 4TB FLASH laptop drives in 2009.

Now, aint I a whiney brat?

EDIT: I didn't notice that we could have 1TB laptop drives as well. That's really quite cool.

[psychofreak]

I should be getting a new laptop around mid-2009, and 500GB would be great to have at a reasonable price for it...if 1TB is the max, 500GB shouldn't be that expensive...

[edesignuk]

Originally Posted by Blue Velvet

Meanwhile CNet is reporting that date to be 2011...

Engadget also report 2011, which I think is a lot more doable. There's no way they're going to cram 4 times the current limit in a drive in the next year or two*.

*prepares to eat foot in year or two

[MacRumors]

Hitachi claims to have made a breakthrough in increasing hard drive capacities. By successfully shrinking the read head using nanotechnology, Hitachi claims that they expect to quadruple the current capacity of hard disks by 2011.

Researchers at Hitachi have successfully reduced existing recording heads by more than a factor of two to achieve new heads in the 30-50 nanometer (nm) range, which is up to 2,000 times smaller than the width of an average human hair (approx. 70-100 microns). Called current perpendicular-to-the-plane giant magneto-resistive*1 (CPP-GMR) heads, Hitachi's new technology is expected to be implemented in shipping products in 2009 and reach its full potential in 2011.

In essence, 4 Terabyte (TB) desktop (3.5") drives and 1 TB laptop (2.5") drives can be expected.

While not specifically mentioned in the release, Hitachi also produces 1.8" drives currently found in Apple's iPod Classic, and we expect similar gains to be expected in those form factors as well. Recent advancements were also announced by Toshiba that can be expected by 2009.

Raw Data: Press Release

Article Link

[kwood]

Wow... I can't imagine 1TB in my MacBook. But I am sure willing to try.

[miketcool]

1 TB laptops. If they can crank the speed up to a ridiculous rate, you'd have a built in gyro to stabilize the super thin assembly!

[syklee26]

that will give y'all enough space to do nothing but DL'ing and watching pr0n for rest of your life.

[Darkroom]

that's kinda scary...

[Yvan256]

The older you get, the less impressive it all gets on the hardware side.

My first PC had an 80MB hard drive. And on my desk right now are 512MB CompactFlash and 1GB SD cards, along with 256MB and 1GB USB sticks, not to mention the 1GB of RAM in my Mac mini G4.

What does impress me is software innovation, because better and faster technology is useless without good software. That's why I switched to Mac two years ago.

It's good news to hear about possible 1TB drives in laptops by 2011, but frankly, it's four years away and I'll be dissapointed if the drives aren't bigger by then. We already have 1TB 3.5" drives in 2007, so... good news, but I'm expecting it, and more.

[~Shard~]

Technology just keeps progressing, it's fun!

I remember when a 400 MB HDD was huge - what would you need that much space for?

I think I'll just hold out for a 1 zettabyte hard drive...

[twoodcc]

2011 is kinda far away. hopefully we'll see more storage sooner.

[Str8edgepunker]

Sheesh, one terabyte in a laptop. I remember the good old days when you could fit an operating system on a floppy drive and in those days they were floppy!

Just kidding, bring it on!

[flopticalcube]

Originally Posted by Yvan256

The older you get, the less impressive it all gets on the hardware side.

My first PC had an 80MB hard drive. And on my desk right now are 512MB CompactFlash and 1GB SD cards, along with 256MB and 1GB USB sticks, not to mention the 1GB of RAM in my Mac mini G4.

What does impress me is software innovation, because better and faster technology is useless without good software. That's why I switched to Mac two years ago.

It's good news to hear about possible 1TB drives in laptops by 2011, but frankly, it's four years away and I'll be dissapointed if the drives aren't bigger by then. We already have 1TB 3.5" drives in 2007, so... good news, but I'm expecting it, and more.

I agree. 4X250GB=1TB in 4 years. Big whoop. 4 years ago the biggest laptop drive was 60-80GB so a 4 times increase is to be expected. Still nice to have.

[Yateball]

WOW... although totally un-necessary that would be awesome!

I DARE someone to fill up a 4TB drive.

Of course thats what used to be said about 4gb drives too

[Telp]

thats amazing.

[Eidorian]

Great more tightly packed data.

[Genghis Khan]

*waits for mac pro of 2011*

DDR4 RAM
crappy graphics
16 cores @ 3.0GHz
16TB of storage


omg...omg...omg...omg blu-ray editing extreme

[davak]

Although I agree these massive amounts of hard drive space will be nice...

I can't wait until the cheap little usb drives get around the 10-20 Gig size that'll fit on your keychain. That's enough room to carry an OS and several apps around.

That'll really start changing things again.

[bigwig]

How does this affect Apple's Flash strategy? I don't see Flash achieving that kind of density increase with current technology.

[4God]

I dunno, I was actually hoping for less fanfare and efforts into the hard disk drive arena and more development and excitement in the solid state disk arena.
I thought that standard hard drives would be declining in technological development over the next 4-8 years with an increase in technological upgrades in flash and other drives.
Looking forward to the day when my OS and storage drives are NOT the weakest link in my machine.

[keysersoze]

Geez. I can't even fill up a 200GB hard drive.


I guess I'm not trying hard enough. <selects Safari Private Browsing...>