EU boffins aim to reinvent the hard disk

EU-backed university researchers are aiming to reinvent the hard disk with a 1Tbit/in2 areal density platter based on nanospheres. The project is called TERAMAGSTOR (TERabit MAGnetic STORage technologies) and is based on work by Professor Dr Manfred Albrecht of the Physics Department in Chemnitz University of Technology in …

[Jon Double Nice]

I think it would be better

if they were called MUFFIN and THERMOS

[hugh]

They'd be better off not bothering

and focusing their efforts on SSD.

[John Smith 19]

@hugh

People have predicted the end of disk storage since at *least* the late 70s. Magnetic bubble Memories wer 50% *bigger* than state of the art 64kb chips of the time, faster than HDD, zero static power more compact etc.

Of course almost no one could grow the GGG substrate defect free and the lithography of the permalloy was *right* at the edge of the state of the art (mutterings that X-ray lithography would solve that problem)

Didn't happen.

Find out how *many* layers need to be aligned to deposit a recording layer on a disk.

Then do the same for your favorite SSD fabrication process.

*When* you can deliver a solid state storage device with the same or *close* to the same number of layers as a magnetic disk, with *reasonably close performance to one, *then* you might have a chance.

[Astarte]

Good use of technology

I see it as a scaled-down version of the equipment use to place eggs in their cartons. Kidding apart the idea of self-assembly is attractive and highly cost-effective. With a predicted six-fold increase in areal density, the larger problem will be with the mechanics - how to produce a read-write system capable of coping with not only the positional but also the magnetic accuracy plus dealing with I/O bandwidths.

Good development, and one that sounds highly promising.

[Efros]

SSDs

In the short term will not replace storage drives as opposed to boot drives, so this looks very interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Only one winner

I bet companies like Seagate and Hitachi love all this increase in storage, they know we are all so paranoid about data loss, will buy two drives for everything, 'cos we have to store so much data in one place!

[Steve 13]

real measurements

It's not a real measurement unless you quote number of CD's or copies of Encyclopaedia Britannica that could be stored on 3 * 3.5" platters at that density.

[Adam Azarchs]

They're not the only ones

Carnegie Mellon Univeristy in the united states has pursuing similar technology for years now: http://nano.phys.cmu.edu/

[Keris]

Units!

A Terabit per square inch? I somehow doubt that EU researchers work in inches! I'd believe it of Americans...

But where are the El Reg standard units? How many encyclopedias will you be able to fit in a London bus, for instance, with this new technology?

[mhenriday]

Way to go, Europe !

This is the sort of research which might help to keep Europe relevant when it comes to technology. Let us stop tagging along in US wars in Southwest and Central Asia, and use the funds and the talent saved to improve our scientific and technological base !...

Henri

[John Smith 19]

A modest proposal. Rename inches

Merkins.

The US is IIRC one of *three* countries world wide which still *officially* accept the Imperial system of units (stuff this "English engineering" nonsense. They are the Imperial units of the Britsh Empire. If they don't like the name either suck it up or go metric. Russia, China and India seemed to have somehow managed to do so).