[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)

[LibWhacker]

Yep, I'm actually a little surprised that here we are in the year 2004 and still we don't have an acceptable solid-state memory alternative for the hard drive. But I'm with you . . . I think that's about to change soon.

One of the interesting things about this article to me is the delay in the arrival of a good solid-state alternative can actually be credited in part with this very useful new invention, SHP. I'm definitely not a luddite or anything, but this kind of reminds me of James Burke's old show, Connections.

[DouglasKC]

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).

Agreed. Dress it up all you want, but really a hard drive nothing more than an elaborate tape recorder.