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IBM Science

IBM's Nanotech Drive Research 123

Posted by Hemos from the tomorrow-today dept.
cfanjul writes: "IBM seems to be helping nanotech's slow march to end products with magnetic particles that can be made into a storage device with ten times the density of some of today's drives."
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IBM's Nanotech Drive Research More

IBM's Nanotech Drive Research

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  • Re:I HATE COOKIES (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So do I. That's why I have...

    Biscuits!

    Have you tried Powdermilk Biscuits?
    My, they're tasty, and expeditious...

    thank you.

  • Avogardo's number... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    is the number of atoms in one gram of matter multiplied by the atomic weight, which is approximately 6.023x10^23, or about 2^79. So for a quantum computer (1 bit/atom) the above estimate of a trillion terabytes is not far off the mark.
  • Reminds me of Starship Titanic -- one of the main characters had to keep bothering the bomb so it would lose count and have to start over :-)
  • The biggest problem with portable devices (like MP3 players) is that storage is so expensive, because leaving a conventional HDD in a cold car can demagnitize and permanently damage it.

    Huh? I know excessive heat can demagnetize, but excessive cold? IANAP, but I don't think so. At least not the kind of cold your car is likely to experience on the surface of the Earth...

    You may have been very lucky indeed -- though I was mistaken in using the term "demagnetize." In reality, cold temperatures (rated @ All that aside, however, moving from cold to warm quickly -- say, by turning on the device while it's very cold -- can cause electrical shorts due to condensation on the board. There are HDD's designed to operate in these conditions, but they are not inexpensive.

    --
    : remove whitespace to e-mail me

  • SuSE requires around 4GB for the full installation. Of course no sane person go for the full installation, but the same can be said for any Microsoft products.

    Personally I don't see this increase in data usage that people keep complaining about, or at least not to any great extent. I find it difficult to fill up any more than around 500MB (though an extra 500MB is nice to have when you're keeping the source around to gcc, glibc, XFree86, etc.), and I'd be at a loss as to what to do with a drive bigger than 2GB.

    I keep reading in retarded computer magazines that people should be getting drives of "at least" 5GB with their new computers: what on earth for?! We're not all pornographers, you know.
  • There was a low budget, very funny, sci-fi flick (early 80's?) called Dark Star that had a talking nuclear bomb stuck in the starship bay that was *determined* to detonate on schedule. The captain had to make a daring spacewalk to reason with the bomb and convince it not to go off. This conversation went off into a metaphysical contemplation of sorts.

    (Same punchline later on in the movie.)

  • Little Eva, Little Milton, Little Anthony and the Imperials.
    The important question, though, is how many Little Debbies could you store?
  • Is that a new road out in Research Triangle Park? :)
  • Funny, it displys in Netscape 4.7 just fine for me. What version are you using? It doesn't seem to work with Internet Exploiter though...

    BTW, It's not a "data tag". That's an "A" tag that points at a "data scheme" URL.

    See A Realization of "data" URL scheme by DeleGate [etl.go.jp] for some other neat examples of this.
  • It sounds like a cool thing, but the server was down when I tried the link at 11:53 am Pacific time.
  • works for me (15 minutes later...)
  • How would you type two 0's in a row? Maybe a tri-state switch (0, 1, off) or two keys...
  • THANK YOU! That is exactly the one I was thinking of!

  • This sounds like an Isaac Azimov short story, forgot the name, read it ages ago. It ends with a massivly powerful computer that takes up zero space and recreates the universe. The story bounces back and forth through computer evolution, some networked, then others self contained, etc.

  • For those of you who might not want to go to the NYTimes, having troubles getting on or want more on the story try this link here. [time.com]

  • I was bitching about the lack of a cypherpunks login @ the NYT, and some kind soul set up the same l+p there as well for me.

    Johan
  • First recordings of a television broadcast.

    1927!!

    http://www.dfm.dircon.co.uk/
  • Combine this with the news recently of IBM's new 70GB hard drive, and you've got a pretty big hard drive, in a pretty small space... 70GB, ten times that is 700GB.

    How long until we have terrabyte drives for consumer use?

    (Better question: How long until Microsoft comes out with an OS that takes up 10GB? Win98 was about 500, Win200 was 1 GB, what's next in size?)
  • Just modify the make options to single keys.
    (or even better #make linux).

    Minor rant: make clean is missing.
  • More like the early seventies.

    Let's see if I can get a good link into the IMDb [imdb.com]. Jon Carpenter's first film, IIRC.

  • I'm a big IBM fan so I'm not complaining but with advances in disk technology are we putting our data at more risk? As densities get higher and higher more data is being packed into a smaller space. What happens if something physically damages the disk? Smaller damage can now cause greater loss. RAID's looking better and better. Don't get me wrong though, when 75Gig drives show up at my local computer shop you can bet I'll be in line.
  • Hemos needs help with his nanotech addiction, but I digress.

    What happened to IBM? A few years ago, they were dead. These days, it seems like their scientists and engineers crank out some amazing new technology once a week! Maybe corporate giants really can adapt to changing markets and reinvent themselves...
  • Morse Code?

    Nah, that's dead technology!

  • No Problem. Take it easy, wet your lips and whistle. Then just head into the direction of the nanobeeps.
    As technology advances, the beeps will be replaced by nanomelodies stored in mp3 format somewhere on a spare/service track.
    Caution: Don't whistle during church service or in a movie theatre. That would definitely waste your karma...
    Ah, for the hearing-impaired, there's a nanoflashing version. Currently, only those with sausage fingers are out of luck: pliers mandatory.

  • Great, I was just planning to read it, and now you spoiled it :)
  • Mabie Guy Nwar can find out for us...
  • Nanotechnology != "nanobot" or "nanoprobe". That's just the creation of sci-fi (which, I admit, is where many of the science-facts regarding nanotech come from). What IBM is doing - through the manipulation of single magnetic particles to form an ultra-dense, ultra-small drive - is definitely nanotechnology. You don't need tiny robots running around doing your work to have nanotechnology. That's one possible application of nanotech, but you don't need bots to have nanotech.
  • I just tried it and it worked, some else must have set it up.

    Pretty easy to remember tho

  • I remember seeing that... I think it was IBM figuring out a way to store data in a peice of Ruby using multicoloured lasers. I never heard of it after that..

    ----
    Don't underestimate the power of peanut brittle
  • I have one of those calculator watches... Stores schedules and phone numbers too.

    ----
    Don't underestimate the power of peanut brittle
  • Is this all the same Coward, or are we having a flood of people doing thier best to insult people for their replies?
    ----
    Don't underestimate the power of peanut brittle
  • It was a short story. I believe it first appeared in Amazing Stories or one of the other early sf rags. I have it in volume one of a collection of Asimov stories that was available from the Science Fiction Book Club. Their web site no longer lists it as available, however.

  • Some people have suggested that eventually all backups will be to disk rather than tape.

    Personally, I don't know. I mean those ATL's or DLT's really scream, especially when you get 16 or so going at once. But if instead of loading a DLT the robot loaded a cartridge with 250GB of mirrored disk, it might hum pretty good to. Then that disk pack could be taken off site, or swapped into another bot.

    Mainly, I just want to take 1000+ picutes with my digital camera without having to download all the time. timbu

  • The best way to make a computer seem more impressive is to add fans. It doesn't matter if they're even cooling anything, but the constant whir (the higher pitched the better) really helps.

    Make Seven
  • This whole thread is all references to the radio program "a Prarie Home Companion", incase someone thinks it's a really wierd troll.

    Make Seven
  • AWWWW hell, let's just start using a binary keyboard. All you would need is one key. Down=1 Up=0
  • This was they funniest thing I have read in a LONG time!I need to get out.
  • Now This was they funniest thing I have read in a LONG time!I still need to get out.
  • yippy
  • Top Five Unforeseen Developments resulting from Nanotech Drives:

    5. Problems related to Heisenberg U.P. [uoregon.edu] allow you to know the drive is installed correctly, or know that the drive is turned on, but not both
    4. Public schools ban nanotech drives because teachers can't see them and students use them for cheating
    3. Cracker Jack includes a drive not just in every box but in every kernel of popcorn, puts Seagate and Western Digital out of business
    2. Scanning electron microscope rental business booms because customers can't see if cables are inserted properly
    1. In 2037, Trans-Nanotech Inc. (NYSE:2TNY) announces product to solve the problem of losing all those tiny drives: the floppy disk

  • Service revenues are dependent on having an installed base. If IBM hadn't reversed the trends on big systems through the changes in systems and software that they made, they wouldn't have had anything to service.

  • They behaved like a corporation that had to please its stockholders.

    They closed several plants.

    They cleaned up their balance sheet in several other ways.

    They changed aspects of their technology to make big systems easier to install and maintain.

    They made it easier for big iron to be servers for non-IBM clients.

    And far from least, the market decided that big iron was really valuable for lots of reasons having to do with security, flexibility, reliability, and shear capacity.

  • Another usefull thing that could come from this is mass storage with no moving parts. Current static memory is just too slow and expensive. Also moving parts tend to beark easier than a fixed solid device.
  • I was unable to bring up the article, but I'd like to join the discussion regardless. What am I missing here? Who needs drives that are only a few nanometers in size? Me thinks that would make them too small for even the smallest munchkin. Beer... Must have...
  • This morning I read this article [mercurycenter.com] from the San Jose Mercury News. It says that soon there will be as much as 50,000 to 100,000 gigabits of data per square inch! If that comes true just imagine the possibilities. It won't take much more than a small room to store all of the experience of a lifetime (a petabyte, according to Arthur C. Clarke).

    Furthermore, the implications are incredible! What would happen to national security? People would be able to carry every secret of an entire country in something smaller than a wallet! I'd like to see the ECHELON monitor that! This stuff is way more serious than mp3s and huge programs... it would revolutionize the computer age! Fiber optics would only be good for real time data. Anyone who *really* wanted to transfer a lot of data would send a square inch hard drive by snail mail for 33 cents! This is way cool stuff!


  • I know this is way off topic
    But sorry, buddy.
    Anyone making referances to "Martin" has no room to talk back to someone.
  • "No pressurization" means very low pressure and not enough vaporized water in the air to condense and cause problems...(of course I'm just speculating)

    --
  • GAH! I'm so sick of that name...Pentium!
    Can't the well-paid Intel marketers think up a better name, considering that the 586 was a -few- generations ago?

    --
  • Nanotechnology is about making things very small, but still be very precise (not necessarily to the scale of single atom alignment).

    --
  • Hey! My quake dir is ~500megs, my q2 dir is ~1.2gb, and my HL dir is ~700megs; there's 2.4gb.
    You don't have to be a porn collector to accumulate space :)

    --
  • Heh. The "self-replication" aspect just made me think of his essay. Seriously, though, does this mean that you could theoretically get more disk space through a firmware upgrade, similar to the way modems are done now? That would be way cool.

  • I remember that, but I can't remember the title either. Ever read that one with the machine that would let people view the past? The government was restricting scientific research, so it seemed like a government-restrictions-are-bad story, but it had a killer ending... makes one think.
  • It will be interesting to see what the actual maximum data density storage is... it might even get as far as using the orientation of quarks to store the data.

    I have a hard time imagining that one...

    Quarks are incredibly tightly bound inside the neutron and proton; AFAIK (but it's been a while since I got my degree in physics), the only way to get any information about the quarks in a nucleon is through extremely high-energy collisions -- big particle accelerator stuff. I suspect you'd take your data medium apart in the attempt to read it.

    But then again, a couple of hundred years ago it was theoretically impossible to do almost everything I manage to do in the course of an ordinary day... so who knows?

    ---

  • Or with a 1 terahertz chip inside we could all tell it what to do with voice commands through headphones with microphone attachment. Forget the keyboard.
  • its kindof hard to read an article if you dont have access to it

    thats kindof cool, because money is what progresses technology... but ibm will end up *owning* nanotech, and will create a monopoly out of the hardware, like pentium has done with their processors

    im so sure technology improvements (like pI II III) come systematically and annually, coincidently after you upgrade to the previous chip

  • I think nanotechnology is about how you manufacture things, not about how big the result is. Nanotechnology means building things atom by atom using itsy bitsy robots that handle each atom individually. I don't think IBM is doing that at all.
  • I was thinking about the assemblers that Drexler talks about. I had forgotten his word.
  • seriously, how big would your keyboard have to be for a wristwatch computer... damn, remember thsose nifty little calculator-watches? those little rubber buttons were a pain, but they were pretty cool!

  • well, uhh, good point. But look, after that's done, you still don't have to worry about carrying your keyboard around with you all the time. or you could just use palm os ;) then you don't need a keyborad...

  • Smaller particles are better, but it will not be cool until I have a holographic storage cube full of pirated multi-region DVDs.
  • Greater density on the same physical size is great (assuming reliability is not affected), but I'd really like to see affordable, large-capacity drives that can operate at very low/very high temperatures. Imagine the implications for portable/vehicular/MP3 type devices!

    The biggest problem with portable devices (like MP3 players) is that storage is so expensive, because leaving a conventional HDD in a cold car can demagnitize and permanently damage it.

    --
    : remove whitespace to e-mail me

  • *ROTFLMFAO* Sorry I wasted my moderator points ealier...someone mod that up PLEASE *LMFAO*

    sorry

  • The biggest problem with portable devices (like MP3 players) is that storage is so expensive, because leaving a conventional HDD in a cold car can demagnitize and permanently damage it.

    Huh? I know excessive heat can demagnetize, but excessive cold? IANAP [data], but I don't think so. At least not the kind of cold your car is likely to experience on the surface of the Earth...

    Anecdotal evidence: I left an IBM 20GB HDD in a car at -20C (that's about -5F, for the uncivilized) for several hours, and it's had no problems. Of course, maybe I was just lucky, but I've never heard anything before that suggested that cold could demagnetize something.

    Of course, cars can get very hot in the summer when parked in the sun, and portable MP3 players probably also take quite a beating. So I'd think heat and vibration would be the two big issues.

    I don't know how the heat issue could be avoided with a magnetic drive, except perhaps building a themos-like heat shield around the thing. I doubt that there exists any material that can remain magnetic at very high temperatures and which is also suitable for high-density data storage.
  • The biggest problem with portable devices (like MP3 players) is that storage is so expensive, because leaving a conventional HDD in a cold car can demagnitize and permanently damage it.

    I, my mother, my sister, and my father all regularly put our laptops (unless my sister steals mine to play Civ:CTP [lokigames.com] or HoMM3 [lokigames.com] or dad and I use his to look up flight charts) in the nose storage of a plane that flies at about 30,000 feet. No pressurization, no heat. And my laptop still works fine, thankee very much, sir (actually I'm looking at selling one of em if someone wants a TP 570 [ibm.com] -- works great, almost new). I believe that heat is another matter, but I've had some laptops that get hot enough that the manual specifically states that you should never, ever put it on your lap (which is where I have it), and the hard drive works just fine.

    Another point is that this is self-assembling magnetic storage. I was at the last Foresight Convention on Nanotechnology [foresight.org], and for all the amazing and interesting things people had done or were trying to do, the real roadblock was self-assembly. building a motor with an AFM is not exactly practical.

    Offtopic: why can't we make players that read/write MD media, and play MP3's? Now that is something I would buy instantly. (or when I have enough PointClick dollars [pointclick.com] to get one -- really offtopic: why doesn't PointClick [pointclick.com] let you use Mozilla [mozilla.org], dammit?)

    Lea

  • well, you have to remember that you have to get up and down -- and if you fly into places like utah, they have you fly around and around and around and around becasue you're not quite as fast as a 727...

    sorry :)

    in any case, you're going to get everything in between as well, but the temperatures are going to be very cold for the amount of vapor.

    Lea

  • ...and for everyone whining about the nytimes.com login.

    http://pa rtners.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/03/biztech/arti cles/17blue.html [nytimes.com]

    ...login free.

  • Well, maby not all.

    But just a reminder that IBM is a major producer of hard drive components, specificly the heads (which I would imagine are the hardest things to make).

    So even if you dont see drives around outside a big blue dominated envirment, IBM is major player in the storage business, for insanly large requirements (which we all know) and everywhere else too.

    And apparently they still have a nearly blank cheque research budget.

  • Welcome to the future folks ...

    Where everyone walks around with a wristwatch size computer weighing 2 oz. capable of connecting to the global pervasive network wirelessly, with a bazillion byte hard disk, 1 TerraHertz (THz) processor, but still has ....

    ...

    a keyboard that weighs 2 LBS, and is larger than my arm!

    just my 2 cents :-)

    cheers
  • Sure you can put some rubbery calculater type buttons on the watch, but just think of how long it would take to build a linux kernel on it

    "make install ; make dep ; make zlilo ; make packages ; make packages_install"

    76 letters and punctuation, about 2 seconds to figure out which of the ALPHABETICALLY ARRANGED letters to push, 12 backspaces to correct for when you try to type too fast,

    and it takes longer to type out than to actually do the compile !!!

    :-)

    cheers
  • Congratulations on your purchase of Newtechs Petabyte drive! Good care of the Petabyte drive will ensure a long fruitfull life.

    Warning! This Petabyte contains a small particle accelerator! Do not jar while in operation or the release of of least 2 MJ may occur!

    Warning! No user serviceable parts!

    Warning! Do not taunt the Petabyte drive!

    Later
    Erik Z
  • You don't think these stories plant themselves, do you?

  • Big box (Score:2)

    by xant ( 99438 )
    Like McDonalds and Cracker Jacks, they can package extra stuff inside that big box. Like: a boxed copy of Q3A, a full-size monitor instead of that dinky LED display, maybe a VR handset instead of that silly 20th-century keyboard, who knows.

    Think of it as Happy Meals for Nerds.

  • The story was "The Last Question." For those not familiar with it, it begins with someone asking a computer the question "How can you reverse entropy?" The computer doesn't know. It then follows the evolution of mankind and the computer through the millenium with the question being asked in various forms. At last, all the stars have burned out and the only thing left is the computer still trying to solve the last, unanswered question. Then the computer says "Let there be light" and there was light.
  • They are sampling nano-fabricated 900MB chips on a footprint of like 5mmx15mm. They target releasing a 180GB drive this year, and a 1.4TB drive next year. All at a cost/MB cheaper than hard drives, a fraction of the operating power, 10 times the bandwidth, and no HD whine! :-)
  • In 3001, Arthur C. Clarke predicts that the maximum amount of data we'll ever be able to get on a device about the size of today's zip disks is about a petabyte (=1000 terabytes), a staggering amount of information. With this it would appear that we're getting one step closer to this limit, or at least *a* limit. It will be interesting to see what the actual maximum data density storage is... it might even get as far as using the orientation of quarks to store the data. With this then you could store the majority of the world's knowledge (if not all) in a canister of oxygen, or a jug of water.

    However, it seems that the more storage we invent, the more we need so in that jug of water all you would probaly fit would be Windows3000. The real problem isn't being addressed here: how to use the storage we have efficiently rather than how to invent more to waste.

    --
  • Problem was ... they couldn't make the laser accurate enough to read it at useable densities.

    And right now that seems to be the biggest problem they face with this technology, too.

    From my point of view, the most interesting thing about this development (and one of the least commented-on, for some reason) is the fact that they're using bottom-up assembly for the recording medium, instead of a top-down process like almost everything else has required. This is a ground-breaking development in the nanotechnology field: instead of using an atomic force microscope to drag atoms into place, they're growing the magnetic domains in their final, self-organized locations.

    This is great stuff!

    ---

  • Re:It's all in the keys (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17, 2000 @11:49AM (#1194970)
    > Where everyone walks around with a wristwatch size computer weighing 2 oz. capable of connecting to the global pervasive
    > network wirelessly, with a bazillion byte hard disk, 1 TerraHertz (THz) processor, but still has ....
    > a keyboard that weighs 2 LBS, and is larger than my arm!

    Nah, man. You're missing the point. Once we get these babies cranked up, they'll be giving YOU orders. Then all we have to do is hook a keyboard onto you, and you'll be fully configured to do the bidding of your new overlord and master.

    (Wristwatch-sized e-brain, upon hearing of the latest wetware in human peripherals:) "Hmmm. Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these things..."

  • DVDs (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17, 2000 @11:54AM (#1194971)
    What's funny about the above comment is that IBM actually advertised that their new 75Gig HD can store "up to 18 DVD movies" [ibm.com].

  • Nanotech drives? This could be bad. (Score:3)

    by VAXGeek ( 3443 ) on Friday March 17, 2000 @11:13AM (#1194972) Homepage
    I hope if IBM keeps on using these nanotech drives that they at least give them a nice orange color. I keep on losing all my nanotech drives either in my pants pocket or in the couch or something. Please, for all of us that lose things, keep on making drives with conventional technology so they can be standard sized. I don't want to have to reach for my microscope to install a nanotech drive.
    ------------
    a funny comment: 1 karma
    an insightful comment: 1 karma
    a good old-fashioned flame: priceless

  • Re:x-late into hours of mp3? (Score:3)

    by GypC ( 7592 ) on Friday March 17, 2000 @11:47AM (#1194973) Homepage Journal

    These would probably fit:

    • Little River Band
    • Little Richard
    • Tiny Tim
    • Little Steven

  • News Direct From IBM Research (Score:3)

    by SEWilco ( 27983 ) on Friday March 17, 2000 @11:42AM (#1194974) Journal
    News Release [ibm.com] direct from the IBM Research server. Notice they hope to get down to a single magnetic grain eventually, for a density increase of 1,000,000 rather than the mere 100 which this 10-times-smaller allows.

  • Re:Nanotech drives? This could be bad. (Score:3)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Friday March 17, 2000 @11:36AM (#1194975) Homepage Journal
    I can see it now, some marketing coke-head accidentally losing the company web site.

    "Hey, Larry's snorted the new portal again! Quick, where are those the needle nose pliers?"

  • Early storage device development (Score:3)

    by smoondog ( 85133 ) on Friday March 17, 2000 @11:38AM (#1194976)
    Although I'm putting it on my radar, I think that a little skepticism is in order. Remember bacteriorhodopsin memory devices? Probably not. They came along a few years ago as a memory chip that could store huge amounts of memory in a 3d bio-organic array. Problem was (as I recall) that they couldn't make the laser accurate enough to read it at useable densities.

    Anyway, my point is, we see alot more new technology storage devices in development than we actually see come to market. Its a little like drug design (a field I'm familiar with), where only a very small percentage of potential drugs actually make it to market.


    -- Moondog

  • x-late into hours of mp3? (Score:4)

    by slpalmer ( 6337 ) <slpalmer@NoSPAm.gmail.com> on Friday March 17, 2000 @10:58AM (#1194977)
    [humor]
    Where is CmdrTaco's translation from storage space into hours of mp3? I depend on this information to plan my future music library! When will it reach the point that you can fit the music equivilent of the library-of-congress onto a single storage device?
    [/humor]

    ---
    Here is the result of your Slashdot Purity Test.
    You answered "yes" to 86 of 200 questions, making you 57.0%

  • My predictions (Score:4)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 ) on Friday March 17, 2000 @11:15AM (#1194978)
    I predict this will put IBM out of business. The reasoning is very simple: small computers aren't impressive.

    My company just bought a huge HP server. It's roomy enough to sit seven for dinner, muliple redundant power supplies, a 6 disk RAID system, ad nauseum. It's very impressive to look at. Of course, I could build a system to do the same thing at a fraction of the cost, but nobody would buy it because it's small, and doesn't Look Cool.

    That's the hidden thing that many companies don't realize. Why did Intel start making CPU *cartridges*? Simple - a small 2x2 inch slab of silicon looks pathetic. "You paid $800 for *THAT*? Ahahahahaha!" They say. Now, you go and show them a stylish cartridge with a cool hologram on the side and all of the sudden "ooh, ahh!" and they want one too.

    Nanotech is doomed.. it's too small. =)

  • Re:x-late into hours of mp3? (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17, 2000 @11:03AM (#1194980)
    Don't be dumb. We're talking about nanotech here, so obviously you could only store small songs. Duh.

  • Re:IBM stuff in all hard drives.. (Score:5)

    by Nagumo ( 38787 ) on Friday March 17, 2000 @11:53AM (#1194981)

    The heads are a definitely an important product for IBM. And yes, you can find them in other vendor's products. As for the hardest part to make, perhaps, but there is another piece that is just as tough. The flex cable.

    Flex cable is the ribbon that connects the actuator to the electronics. Sounds easy, but you have to remember that this thing is moving (flexing) constantly. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, thousands and millions of times. It takes some serious physics to design these parts, while minimizing the costs. Constant movement inside a little oven, and you have to design these things to cost you pennies. Not easy.

    These are just two parts. What else is tough to make and requires significant engineering?

    • Platters which have to be ground super smooth and coated with the magnetic material. The slightest bump will cause all kinds of bad things to happen when the head contacts it.
    • The channel, which is essentially the A/D converter that takes the signal from the head. This is a big piece of R&D, and the specifics are highly guarded between HDD companies.
    • The interface code - controls how the drive interacts with the rest of the world. IDE, SCSI, FC-AL, etc. and of course it has to be tuned to handle the cases where the host adapter companies got the interface wrong.
    • the motor
    • Servo code to control the motor and the actuator. Handles the basics like seeking, and also the more advanced things like load/unload.
    • ESD concerns. The heads are extremely sensitive to static electricity. The electronics are too, but not to the same degree.
    • Electronic board layout. This is a lot of tradeoffs to cut cost.
    • Power and heat concerns. The attention that these two items get is psychotic. The drives today are very efficient machines.
    • Test. Especially when working with the newer interfaces, newer heads (ie. GMR), etc. Lots of work here. The absolutely worst thing a drive can do is return incorrect data and declare it to be correct. Slightly less severe than this is if the drive explodes in a giant fireball. (At least then you know the data is bad.)

    This is just what I can come up with off the top of my head. The HDD world is a great mix of software and hardware (and some really genius R&D people). The cost to enter this market is absolutely enormous. And to remain in the lead requires a constant investment.

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