[TSgt]

Excellent observation!

A Moore's law definitely doesn't apply to this technology.

I've heard however that IBM has new means of storing data using lasers and crystals.

Mechanical drives have a limited future because they are just that...mechanical.

[js1138]

Mechanical drives have a limited future because they are just that...mechanical.

Don't be hasty. Mechanical drives are thriving in digital cameras. They are getting even smaller than the flash memory sized microdrives.

Next year's computers will probably be small form factor machines with two inch drives.

[oceanview]

that's why IBM sold their disk drive business.

still, the use of disk drives in PVRs (Tivo, etc) is skyrocketing.

[old-ager]

> A Moore's law definitely doesn't apply to this technology.

Hmmm. I recall buying a 25 MHz 386 with 8 MB of RAM and a 150 MB hard drive. All of these components were pretty well matched. The hard drive was $1500.

Now, multiply the 150 MB by 1000. That's 150 GB. You can buy that for $75 now. Multiplying the 25 MHz by 1000, we have 25,000 MHz = about 25 GHz. But a garden-variety PC processor is about 2.5 GHz, not 25.

Multiplying the 8 MB RAM by 1000, we get 8,000 MB or about 8 GB. Not too many 2.5 GHz processors are paired with 8 G of RAM.

So hard disks have progressed faster than other components, not slower.