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Magnetic disks are dead, long live magnetic disks?
UK based startup DataSlide caught my eye today. I got a tip from a colleague to check them out, which is what I did.
They produce something called "HRD" or Hard Rectangular Drives.
As far as I can tell this is still a product that is on paper, but shows quite the potential and is an alternative to the existing storage media such as the regular hard drives and solid state drives.
Basically, they have a sandwich construction consisting of a dual-sided medium and on either side of this medium you will find a parallel 2D array of magnetic heads that can read or writes to up to 64 embedded heads at a time. A piezoelectric actuator moves the other media that contain the heads. These are seperated by a diamond coat that acts as a 'lubricant'.
Take a look at the following image to give you a better idea:
Big advantage is that each head can read or write an entire sector at once. The density of the heads will then be the decisive factor in achieving throughput. Current theoretical limits are set up at around 160,000 IO/s and a throughput of around 500 MB/s at a power consumption of about 4W.
This looks impressive, and I can imagine that this might mean that our 'beloved' magnetic disks may not be dead quite yet. But untill we can actually hold one of the disks in our hands this is still all theory, be it an interesting theory. Let's see how this works out.
[update]
As RobIII kindly pointed out to me in the comments section of this post, I was a little bit too late in pointing this out. There is already a Dutch post about it here on Tweakers.net. Sorry for doubleposting.
They produce something called "HRD" or Hard Rectangular Drives.
As far as I can tell this is still a product that is on paper, but shows quite the potential and is an alternative to the existing storage media such as the regular hard drives and solid state drives.
Basically, they have a sandwich construction consisting of a dual-sided medium and on either side of this medium you will find a parallel 2D array of magnetic heads that can read or writes to up to 64 embedded heads at a time. A piezoelectric actuator moves the other media that contain the heads. These are seperated by a diamond coat that acts as a 'lubricant'.
Take a look at the following image to give you a better idea:
Big advantage is that each head can read or write an entire sector at once. The density of the heads will then be the decisive factor in achieving throughput. Current theoretical limits are set up at around 160,000 IO/s and a throughput of around 500 MB/s at a power consumption of about 4W.
This looks impressive, and I can imagine that this might mean that our 'beloved' magnetic disks may not be dead quite yet. But untill we can actually hold one of the disks in our hands this is still all theory, be it an interesting theory. Let's see how this works out.
[update]
As RobIII kindly pointed out to me in the comments section of this post, I was a little bit too late in pointing this out. There is already a Dutch post about it here on Tweakers.net. Sorry for doubleposting.
07-'09 Don't move... Ever... No, really!
06-'09 "Want support on Symmetrix? Reboot 500 Windows servers."
Comments
By
Renegade,
Monday 22 June 2009 16:39
Woops, dat krijg je als je een tijd lang niet aanwezig was en het nieuws niet terug hebt gelezen. 
[Comment edited on Monday 22 June 2009 16:40]
By
DonJunior,
Monday 22 June 2009 18:55
Ik begon het ook serieus te lezen.. halverwege (toen ik bij het plaatje aan kwam) dacht ik van.. "Hey.. wat een bekend verhaal" .... en toen las ik het commentaar van Robill .. hahaa 
By
H!GHGuY,
Monday 22 June 2009 20:21
Ik vraag me nog steeds af waarom ze bij moderne harde schijven niet met alle koppen tegelijk lezen/schrijven. De meeste disks hebben 1 of meer platters. Door dan met alle heads (2/platter) te lezen/schrijven kun je dus 2+ keer zo snel lezen/schrijven.
Of mis ik iets?
Of mis ik iets?
By
Kabelzaag,
Monday 22 June 2009 20:43
Nou, dat kan de controller op het PCB van de harde schijf niet aan, je kan alleen OF lezen, OF schrijven. Tenminste, dat was zo. Western Digital heeft een harde schijf geïntroduceerd die 2 processors heeft, en dus 2 koppen tegelijk kan gebruiken.