MagneticStorage
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Griffin gives Apple's Macbook its missing Magsafe plug
One of the most criticized features of Apple's ultra-thin and lightweight MacBook (along with its lack of computing power) is the solitary USB-C port. Not only can you not power the device and use an accessory at the same time, but it no longer has the damage-preventing Magsafe power plug that breaks away if you trip on it. As it often does, Apple accessory maker Griffin has arrived with a product to fill that void, the Breaksafe Magnetic USB-C Power Cable.
WD's 1TB VelociRaptor HDD gets reviewed: substantial gains, moderate price
Western Digital has expanded its line of desktop-grade VelociRaptors to include a 1TB model that's available now for $320, but those kidding themselves with that whole "250GB is enough" thing can get in for as little as $160. Top-level specs include a 10,000RPM spindle rate and a SATA 6Gb/s interface housed within a 3.5-inch heat sink -- useful for lessening the burden of the drive's thermal output on the rest of the machine. Storage Review's tests reveal that sequential read and write transfer speeds top out around 206MB/s, thermal dissipation is excellent with low power consumption, and that random access has improved compared with its 600GB predecessor. They consider the new HDD to be a "very appealing value proposition" and "a blend of high performance, storage, capacity, and low cost." Hot Hardware discovered virtually identical numbers with their tests, but wasn't quite as forgiving when it comes to the cost-per-GB versus 7200RPM hard drives. However, they call this VelociRaptor the "fastest HDD yet" at "nearly double the capacity of previous" model. You can find even more stats and impressions to chew on at the sources below.
That's hot: Heat-based recording could boost magnetic drive speed, performance
Magnetic fields are pretty nifty for levitating stuff, carving sponge-like thingamajigs and, of course, data storage. But an international team led by the University of York in the UK has figured out a way to replace magnetic fields for the latter by using ultra-short heat pulses instead. Conventional thinking typically dictates that an external magnetic field is required to store data on a magnetic medium. By using heat, however, researchers were able to record terabytes of information per second in a way that is also more energy-efficient compared to current hard drive technology. As for the time it'll take for the tech to make it to market, well, we have a feeling it won't be as fast.
Seagate shores up its hard drive business, finalizes Samsung purchase
It's taken the pair a fair few months to hammer down the details, but it's finally official: Seagate now holds the figurative keys to Samsung's hard drive business. According to the press release, Seagate will retain some Samsung employees as well as gaining access to the electronics manufacturer's solid-state storage for future products. Samsung will hold onto a 9.6 percent stake of Seagate and cash money said to total around $1.375 billion. You can still expect to see remnant Samsung hard drives floating around next year while Seagate decides how it's going to further its storage business -- hopefully involving more than just shrinking warranties.
The under-appreciated hard drive gets torn apart and explained (video)
We don't know about you, but we generally don't give much thought to our hard drives or how they work. And that's a shame because, as you'll find out in the video after the break, they're veritable miracles of modern science. Bill Hammack, also known as Engineer Guy, takes us on a detailed tour of the inner workings of the ubiquitous hard disk drive -- from the Lorentz Force driven arm, to the head that floats a mere 10nm above the layered cobalt platters thanks to the wonders of aerodynamics. Maybe after this lesson in modern magnetic storage from Mr. Hammack you'll appreciate how much more there is to storing your collection of Mission of Burma b-sides than simply printing ones and zeros on a shiny, spinning thing.
'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.
Samsung sells HDD division to Seagate for $1.375 billion
We're firmly of the belief that SSDs are our future and Samsung would seem to agree. The Korean electronics giant has just announced that it's selling its hard disk drive-manufacturing arm to Seagate Technology for a neat $1.375 billion in equal measures of cash and stocks. As a result, Samsung Electronics will own approximately 9.6 percent of Seagate and get to nominate one new member to join Seagate's Board of Directors, while the two companies have further agreed to deepen their strategic relationship with related cross-licensing and supply stipulations. Samsung will provision Seagate's solid state drives with NAND flash memory, whereas Seagate will furnish Samsung's PCs and consumer electronics products with hard disk storage. The deal is expected to complete in full by year's end and you can read all about it in Seagate's press release after the break. [Thanks, Pavel]
Mini disks with slanted edges could save your data, not the music industry
No, not those MiniDiscs. The ones we're talking about, created by researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, are much, much smaller -- less than 300 nanometers across. The tiny disks of magnetic material are formed using glass spheres that are themselves about 300nm in diameter. They are arranged into hexagonal shapes on top of a thin, magnetic layer and are then bombarded with argon ions. The ions wear away the magnetic layer that is not protected by the glass spheres, leaving behind tiny disks. The argon also starts to eat at the glass too, shrinking the spheres and, as they erode, chipping away at the edges of those newly formed disks on the surface. This gives them a nano beveled edge, allowing for a so-called vortex twist that enables magnetic storage of individual bits at incredibly low power. While it remains to be seen what kind of storage density can be achieved in this manner, we do know one thing for sure: you're a real trooper if you made it through that post. Give yourself a pat on the back and three internet points.
IBM makes racetrack memory breakthrough, which could come in handy someday
If you can't tell your DRAM from your STT-MRAM, you'll need to bear with us for a sec: IBM's figured out the math required to read and write data from the spaces between magnetic fields, racing across a nanowire, at hundreds of miles per hour. IBM's been plugging away at the so-called racetrack memory since 2004, calling it the perfect hybrid of magnetic storage and flash, but until recently scientists didn't know whether the magnetic domain walls (where data will live) had any mass to speak of. As it turns out, they do, and thus have to obey the tiresome laws of physics as they move along the nanowire "track," but also accelerate and decelerate the exact same amount, more or less canceling out the effect. Long story short, IBM can use this knowledge to precisely position those 1s and 0s in their newfound data bank, and someday we'll all reap the benefits of dense, speedy and reliable memory. You know, assuming PRAM, FeRAM, and ReRAM don't eat IBM's lunch. PR after the break.
Toshiba demonstrates successful BPR HDD, is 2.5Tb per inch a platter's last stand?
We'll be honest: we thought SSDs would suck down most of platter-based storage's milkshake by now -- that magnetic disks would follow tapes into obscurity. Alas, SSDs are still niche items, and Toshiba is doing all it can to keep them that way, demonstrating a successful prototype of a new storage technique called bit-pattern recording that currently generates a storage density of 2.5Tb per square inch. That's about five times more dense than the company's current offerings, achieved by placing individual bits onto lithographed "islands" of magnetic material. This protects the charge of the individual bits and allows those sectors to be much smaller. Toshiba suggests we won't see these until 2013, but now we're left wondering what's next... can engineers stuff even more bits onto these things?
Japanese gurus unveil 50TB magnetic tape cartridges, are officially 'taking it way back'
It's comical, really -- we can't get a decently powerful Atom to save our lives, but the absolutely thrilling world of magnetic tape storage is bounding ahead at a record pace. Priorities, people. For the archivists and A-type pack rats in the crowd, you'll probably be atypically elated to know that Hitachi Maxell and the Tokyo Institute of Technology have teamed up in order to develop the world's most capacious tape cartridges. Back in January, IBM and Fujifilm celebrated a momentary victory by announcing a 35TB version of this same product, but this record shattering attempt takes areal density to spaces never before ventured into in order to hit the magical 50TB mark. 'Course, you'll probably never see one outside of your state's largest library, but at least that 3TB HDD you're drooling over for your next PC seems so much more bodacious now. Oh, wait.
Western Digital VelociRaptor VR200M review roundup: fast, capacious, but no SSD
While it's only a matter of time before solid state storage becomes cheap and reliable enough to replace magnetic media for good, companies like Western Digital are still finding ways to keep those platters a' spinning. Take this new WD VelociRaptor VR200M, for instance. Critics agree that while it doesn't offer anywhere near SSD levels of performance, it's certainly the fastest rotational SATA drive ever tested -- 15 to 30 percent improved over the last generation of VelociRaptors, depending on the benchmark -- and at roughly 50 cents per gigabyte for the three-platter, 600GB WD6000BLHX ($329), it offers more capacity than any SSD you could hope to buy without refinancing your third vacation home. Reviewers note that with a 15mm drive height, you still won't be dropping one of these speed demons in your new laptop, and your desktop might be better off with a cheaper 7200RPM drive paired with a similarly inexpensive SSD, but if you're looking for that single drive that does it all, the new VelociRaptor is your best bet. Hit the links below for the full skinny, and a deep, deep dive into the fascinating world of IOPS, read speeds and write times. Read - TechReport Read - AnandTech Read - PC Perspective Read - HotHardware Read - Tom's Hardware Read - ExtremeTech Read - LegitReviews Read - StorageReview Read - DesktopReview
Amazon's frustration-free packaging is anything but for hard drives
It's all well and good to cut corners when you're ridding durable, miniature electronics of their brittle plastic clamshells -- but this time, Amazon's "Frustration-Free Packaging" initiative has gone too far. The company's shipping computer hard drives in the stuff. According to dozens of irate customers, Western Digital hard drives shipped by the e-tailer over the past several months have arrived in damaged cardboard containers, thin layers of bubble wrap, or even loose in a simple electrostatic discharge bag without an ounce of padding to keep them from harm. And while some buyers shipped them back immediately when they saw what had happened, many who tried them anyhow found their magnetic storage dead on arrival. While we're not certain whether Western Digital or Amazon was at fault for placing the drives on the "frustration-free" list in the first place (Seagate drive buyers haven't reported similar issues), Gadget Lab reports that Amazon is aware of the problem, and already working to ensure future (lack of) packaging avoids causing more frustration than it's worth. Read the horror stories with pics at our source links below.
