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Researchers have successfully stored a single data bit in only 12 atoms. Currently it takes about a million atoms to store a bit on a modern hard-disk, the researchers from IBM say. They believe this is the world's smallest magnetic memory bit. According to the researchers, the technique opens up the possibility of producing much denser forms of magnetic computer memory than today's hard disk drives and solid state memory chips. "Roughly every two years hard drives become denser," research lead author Sebastian Loth told the BBC. "The obvious question to ask is how long can we keep going. And...

The disaster in Thailand has caused immense human suffering in the Asian nation, destroyed infrastructure including roads, and triggered major disruptions in industrial production. The tragedy is also expected to have a serious impact on the hard disk drive market. It’s seen as having a much bigger impact on the personal computer industry than the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Robert W. Baird analyst Jayson Noland said. “This is going to be worse for the PC supply chain for sure,” he said in an interview. “This is a really big deal for the electronics supply chain.” Seagate Chief Executive...

SNIPPET: "According to one of my most trusted sources, the blurry image seen on the tape is indeed Osama bin Laden. One of the reasons that this is convincing is that the blurry image remains in the video. As Sahab, which produces al Qaeda's propaganda, is very selective in the information it releases, and rarely leaves garbage in its videos. As Sahab intentionally leaves in this clip, for reasons unknown. Does al Qaeda want to generate a buzz? Is this a hidden message? Perhaps this is a precursor to a new bin Laden tape?"

Stop worrying about when the hard drive in your computer will die. Google wants to kill it permanently anyway. The new Google Chrome operating system, which was unveiled Tuesday, as well as hints and suggestions from Apple and Microsoft, offers us a preview of the PC of the future. And it will come without that familiar whirring disk that has been the data heart of the PC for the past 25 years. The Chrome OS will at first be available on all-black laptops from Samsung and Acer. And because the new platform stores everything -- files, applications, data bits and...

Seagate today started shipments of the Barracuda XT, which boasts the fastest SATA connection yet. The Barracuda XT is a 7200 RPM 3.5-inch hard drive featuring 2 TB of storage capacity and a SATA 6 Gb/sec. interface. "Capacity and performance remain the defining attributes of hard drives for PC gamers, digital multimedia content developers and many other customers requiring high-end systems at home and in the office," said Dave Mosley, executive vice president of Sales and Marketing at Seagate. "Seagate is meeting these requirements with the first 7200 RPM desktop hard drive to combine 2 TB of storage capacity with...

The firmware update released by Seagate yesterday is apparently bricking 500GB hard drives. There are hundreds of people complaining in the Seagate forums that, after “successfully” updating their drives, they no longer work. If you own a Seagate drive, you might want to hold off on any firmware updates until this whole thing is ironed out. We’ll keep you posted.

WASHINGTON - Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court Friday in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005. The White House revealed new information about how it handles its computers in an effort to persuade a federal magistrate it would be fruitless to undertake an e-mail recovery plan that the court proposed. "When workstations are at the end of their lifecycle and retired ... the hard drives are generally sent offsite to another government entity for physical destruction," the White House said in a sworn...

Toshiba says it has become the first manufacturer to commercially release hard drives with perpendicular recording platters, an industrywide innovation that greatly increases the amount of data a drive can hold. The MK4007GAL 1.8-inch drive packs 40GB on a single platter, which is the most for a 1.8-inch diameter hard drive platter to date. The platters can hold 206 megabits per square millimeter. The drive can be found in Toshiba's Gigabeat F41 music player. Toshiba also makes drives for Apple Computer's iPods. Two configurations of the drive exist: a 40GB with one platter and a two-platter 80GB drive. Next year,...

Wondering if any freeper can help. I've tried Fry's, HP, and Radio Shack: no joy. I gave a friend's daughter an HP laptop last year as a college-entrance present. It lasted 6 months and someone gave it a big cup of coke. We managed to save the HD. Now I am trying to put the drive in a standard desktop PC. I bought a kit which provides spacers and a special header to bring power in thru the HD pinouts. Then the big surprise. THE PINS ON THE LAPTOP PC DRIVE (and the adapter) DO NOT MATCH a STANDARD IDE...

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday October 07, @05:45PM from the need-to-know-basis dept. jaromil writes "Today at about 18:00 CET FBI raided the indymedia servers hosted by Rackspace both in US and England. At present, the italian indymedia and numerous other local IMC websites are obscured, while the reasons why the hard drives were taken are still unknown."

developing story

CBSNEWS: Haunted By Ghosts Of Hard Drives PastSimson Garfinkel, a graduate student at the MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science, holds a used hard drive he bought containing personal information. (AP)Haunted By Ghosts Of Hard Drives Past CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Jan. 16, 2003 "People will think they have deleted the file, they can't find the file themselves and that the file is gone when, in fact, forensically you may be able to retrieve it." Tom Aleman Deloitte & Touche (AP) So, you think you cleaned all your personal files from that old computer you got rid of? Two MIT graduate students suggest...

<p>Michael Norman, who in his "semi-retired" spare time enjoys turning discarded computers into functioning tools, often donating them to poor schoolchildren, has happened across the carcass of one eye-opening machine in a Dumpster next to a Dunkin' Donuts in Schaumburg, Ill.</p>