Posted May 14th 2007 3:31AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Storage
While Fujitsu works overtime in order to boost hard drive capacity by
500-percent in just two years, researchers at the University of Hamburg in Germany are devising a method to move magnetically-stored data around a
HDD "a hundred times faster than currently possible." Guido Meier and colleagues are purportedly using "nanosecond pulses of electric current to push magnetic regions along a wire at 110-meters per second," which easily trumps today's method of using comparatively slow spinning discs to access data. Additionally, their vision of the next-generation hard drive will sport fewer mechanical parts in order to lessen the "wear and tear" that existing units face. Notably, the idea behind the creation was actually conjured up by an
IBM employee in 2004, but if the Germans crafting the current prototype have anything to say about it, said idea could turn into reality sooner than later.
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