storage-capacity
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'3D Towers' double disk storage capacity, don't require glasses
Here's some exciting news for all you data storage enthusiasts and academics out there: researchers in France have found a way to double the storage capacity of magnetic disk drives by constructing "3D towers" of information. The team from SPINTEC created these pillars out of bit-patterned media -- separated magnetic nanodots, each of which carries one bit of data. By layering the dots in specific formations, the team created a "multilevel magnetic recording device" with an areal density of two bits per dot -- twice what it started with. According to researcher Jerome Moritz, these findings could provide IT companies with a new way to circumvent physical limitations to their data storage capacities, allowing them to build up and over the vaunted one Tbit per square inch barrier. The team's full findings were recently published in the American Institute of Physics' Journal of Applied Physics. You can read the full article at the source link or, if you're afraid of paywalls, just check out the PR below.
Nanotech research could fit 10 trillion bits of data onto disk the size of a quarter
Two researchers, Ting Xu and Thomas Russell, are in the midst of developing some potentially sweet nanotech that could allow storage of around 10.5 terabits (or 10 trillion bits) of data on a space the size of a quarter. They're currently working on the technique, which starts with a sliced crystal (sapphire or silicon) sliced at a jagged angle, which is then heated to 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit which causes the crystal to reorganize itself into a sawtooth pattern at three nanometer angles. The crystal is then sprayed with a custom polymer, dried, and treated again with a different solvent, after which the polymer then settles into a hexagonal pattern on the surface of the crystal. Sound complicated? Well, it is, and all the kinks aren't quite work out, but the technique essentially provides a path to creating a self-assembling disk with far more storage capacity than anything currently available. The current state of the research will be detailed in the upcoming issue of Science magazine. We'll believe it when we see it, but keep up the good work, guys!
Self-assembling polymer arrays could lead to larger hard drives, boastful Badgers
Most folks up in Madison are readying their face paint and stocking up on tailgating supplies, but the geeks among us (bless 'em!) are focusing their attention on something much more relevant to your future RAID array. A team from UW-Madison (along with partners from Hitachi) is getting set to publish a report that details a patterning technology that could offer performance gains over current methods while reducing time and cost of manufacturing. The process builds on existing approaches by "combining the lithography techniques traditionally used to pattern microelectronics with novel self-assembling materials called block copolymers." So, what does all this technobabble mean for you? Huge gains in density on patterned media, or if that's still not straightforward enough, ginormous HDDs in the near future.[Via Protein OS]
Sony doubles Memory Stick Pro Duo format capacity to 8GB
They're slightly behind schedule on this, but Sony today announced the expected doubling of the Memory Stick Pro Duo format to 8GB. You'll be able to pick one of these bad boys up in February for the low, low (as we say in Kazakhstan: NOT!) price of $300.
IBM, Fujifilm developing 8 terabyte magnetic tape cartridges
If you thought that magnetic tape cartridges were headed the way of Zip disks and five-and-a-quarter-inch floppies into the storage medium graveyard, think again, because IBM and Fujifilm are currently working together to make the venerable technology capable of storing a Blu-ray-humbling eight terabytes-per-cartridge. Using barium ferrite crystal film from Fuji and read/write technology from IBM, the two companies are reporting success in creating storage densities of up to 6.67 billion-bits/square-inch, which is something like fifteen times the capacility of current backup tape. Unfortunately there is no word yet if the cartridges, which should be available in about five years, will be able to fit in your old 8-track player for rocking millions and millions of MP3s.