back to article Hitachi kicks open Door 4 in the House of Spinning Platters

The post-perpendicular magnetic recording world in the land of spinning disks had three land masses; HAMR, BPM and Shingled Writing. Now there's a fourth; microwave magnetic recording (MMR). Hitachi, with its GST hard disk drive (HDD) subsidiary, has been working with Japan's NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Spinning technology

    I think that within 10 years, maybe much less the only things that will spin around inside our computers will be the fans.

    1. Ammaross Danan
      FAIL

      Title

      I'm sure that's what they said 10 years ago when hard drives boasted ~120GB and flash chips were starting to roll out. Now that SSDs have caught on, sure they'll ramp up and get more compact, but I'm sure it's significantly cheaper to dump magnetic bits on a platter.

  2. TeeCee Gold badge
    Thumb Up

    HAMR alternative?

    Actually it sounds like pretty much exactly the same thing, only using microwaves to excite (heat) the molecules of the recording medium to make 'em easier to change rather than, er, heat.

    Presumably fitting a microwave emitter into the R/W head is a rather simpler prospect than adding a microscopic blowtorch, so HAMR will probably be stillborn as a result.

    I agree with the first poster though. This'll probably keep us in business until SSDs get to a price / capacity point that causes the HDD to go the way of magnetic drums and removable disk packs. Thus any cash thrown at BPM development aiming for a 2020 launch is probably going straight off round the U-bend.

    MMR looks a winner and could well be the last gasp of disk.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Headmaster

      No

      It's not heat, it's field induced precession. And no, putting a functionally useful microwave emitter on an hga is not trivial. With everyone whining now about having to pay $50-100 for a 1TB hard drive and SSD's not hitting that level any time soon, don't hold your breath on SSD's. Now if you're willing to pay 2x for 1/10 the capacity for better performance -- at least while the SSD is mostly empty -- perhaps a little better reliability, and a trivial amount of power savings, then knock yourself out.

  3. cmaurand
    Linux

    SSD's are coming

    And there are advances to give them higher densities and longer life that have been testing and the manufacturing engineers are now working out the processes for mass production. Spinning platters will be history, soon.

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