A Preview of Future Disk Drives

MIT Technology Review ^ | Monday, June 13, 2011 | By Tom Simonite

[Red Badger]

Fast access: This prototype hard drive made using phase-change memory chips can read some data faster than a commercial flash hard disk. Credit: UCSD

[Red Badger]

Ping!............

[TSgt]

Years from now I can see myself telling my son (7 months old), “Son, there was a time when information was stored on spinning magnetic platters. An arm used to swing over the platter to read the encoded data. Like a record player.”

What’s a record player dad?

[ShadowAce]

[Red Badger]

Soon the HDD will join its brethren in the annals of history.........3 1/2” floppy, 5 1/4” floppy, 8” floppy, reel to reel tape, 8 tracks and casettes................

[reg45]

Here is what is available now: Fusion-io ioDrive Octal

Cost: You don't want to know!!!

[JoeProBono]

[Red Badger]

5.12 TB?

That’s a lotta pr0n!.............

[ShadowAce]

That’s a lotta pr0n!.............

Well, that depends on whether you're a politician with a lot of Facebook friends.....

[Red Badger]

Well, that depends on whether you're a politician with a lot of Facebook friends.....

The kind of large volume, small read and write patterns that Onyx excelled at are a hallmark of the type of calculations involved in analyzing social networks like those of Twitter, says Swanson.

[DManA]

My kids were about 12 when they saw their first record and record player. I gave them an LP and pointed to the player and told them to get music out of it. Hilarity ensued.

[TXnMA]

"Soon the HDD will join its brethren in the annals of history.........3 1/2” floppy, 5 1/4” floppy, 8” floppy, reel to reel tape, 8 tracks and casettes [sic} ................"

Ah, memories... The "disk drive" in my first Apple ][+ was a Radio Shack portable audio cassette player. That didn't last long before it was replaced by 5-1/4" 13-sector floppy drive (because my wife didn't like the way I talked to the tape drive...) '-)

[TXnMA]

As described, it sounds like this should serve best as a high speed “virtual memory” cache...

[abb]

About ten years ago, I was sorting though boxes of 45 rpm single-plays that I still had (and have). My then fifteen year old daughter walked in and asked “What are those, Dad?”

Forty-Fives, I told her - there’s music on them. She was quite impressed with the technology.

I felt old...

[sniper63]

That’s a lotta pr0n!............. Well, that depends on whether you're a politician with a lot of Facebook friends.....Or a very large mammel living in the ocean......I forgot that's Prawn not pr0n...... nevermind

[ken in texas]

Thanks for keeping up the pings.

I can't justify the expense to stay up with the most recent technology, but always enjoy reading about what's being developed.

[massgopguy]

Ah for the days of a CDC 300 MB Disk Drive “Head Crash”. Yes, I’d love 8 hours overtime boss!

[massgopguy]

Ah for the days of a CDC 300 MB Disk Drive “Head Crash”. Yes, I’d love 8 hours overtime boss!

[massgopguy]

My daughter flirted with the idea of absconding my Ramone’s records. Fat chance.