[Xenalyte]

Lubricating the drive

This puts me in mind of one of the very first Top 10 Lists we ever saw Letterman do: The Top 10 Expressions That Sound Dirty But Aren't.

Frosting the pastry
Shooting hoops
Jumping the turnstile
Checking your oil
Tethering the blimp
Sending out for sushi
Picnic on the grass
Quarter-Pounder at the Golden Arches
Shaking hands with Abraham Lincoln

and the Number One Expression That Sounds Dirty But Isn't:

Wind-surfing on Mount Baldy.

[RightWhale]

A lubricant coating shields the disk from damage during contact with the head, which can fly back and forth across the disk dozens of times per second.

The sound the head makes when it digs into the surface of the disk rendering the disk immobile is similar to the sound made when the brake shoe on a Chevy makes when it finally runs out of brake lining and it is metal to metal contact just before the brake welds the wheel in place.

[sc2_ct]

Interesting article. I personally think that we're about to see the end of mechanical storage entirely. It's my guess that with the introduction of the S-ATA standards that we'll be seeing solid-state memory. Another option is massively multi-layer 3D read holographic storage (similar in concept to multi-layer DVDs but much higher capacity and faster access).

Moore's law is a convenient observation, but in actuallity, it is technology itself that grow exponentially, and it just happened to work out the same for IC design. Technology has been actually accelerating slightly (if plotted from 1900, there is a very slight upward curvature to the trends that I've seen)

[bikepacker67]

sterically hindered polyester

That's gotta hurt...

[SpyGuy]

On a more somber note...

Every time I read one of these stories of a new scientific or engineering discovery, or see photos of space (or of the Earth from space), I can't help but think, "What has any of the Islamic states done in the past few hundred years to advance civilization or better mankind?"

Answer: Nothing!

[TC Rider]

I had a lime green leisure suit in the 70's that was probably good for a zillion terrabytes.

[Old Professer]

As the disks become smaller they can be spun faster; why not stack them or go back to the Edison cylinder if they can't pack anymore on a single disk?

[reagan_fanatic]

My wife asked me how I lubricate my drive and I said by looking at your floppies, of course!

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

At the 10,000-plus revolutions per minute now typical of computer hard drives, centrifugal forces can ripple the lubricant like a washboard.

Looks like the old 5400 rpm drives ain't so bad after all. They would seem to have their advantages.

[djf]

Wasn't the whole idea about the Winchester drive that a cushion of air prevented the heads from ever touching the surface?

[supercat]

What's the difference between hardware and software?

As time gets by, hardware gets smaller, faster, and cheaper.

Software gets bigger, slower, and more expensive.

Seriously, though, there are some major problems on the horizons if trends continue, because once things stop accellerating there's going to be a lot of 'junk' data hanging around like an albatros which improvements in technology will no longer be able to handle conveniently.

[PoorMuttly]

Muttly hopes it will stand up better than whatever they currently use to his monthly "dip the computer and t.v. in Bleach" policy.

You never can be too sure these days.

Next time, however, Muttly intends to un-plug the t.v. first. Well...the new t.v. It did seem to fix the problem though...

[Flying Circus]

Just to nitpick, tiny arm that reaches over the disk is not the slider, but the Head Gimbel Assembly (HGA). The Slider is the part at the end of the HGA that contains the read and write heads and acts to control the distance of the heads from the disk.

Stiction is an interaction of surface energies driven by the micro-roughness of the disk much more than the lubricant. When you shut your drive down, the head automatically goes to either a rough area at the center ring of the disk or a ramp off of the disk because if the head were on the disk when it stopped the stiction would either seize the drive or rip the heads off.

Finally, 10k RPM is not becoming common but is still a fairly high end drive mostly reserved for servers. Most desktops are doing just fine with 7200RPM. Most mobile drives turn at 5200 RPM but newer high end drives are getting to 7200RPM. The fastest drives are up to 15k RPM but are a very small market.