Lasers can increase the speed of writing to hard drives a hundred times

    Danish scientists were able to achieve the speed of writing to the hard drive, which is one hundred times higher than the speed of existing devices today. The method used for this consists in using lasers to heat the recording surface and change the magnetic field. True, the reading speed does not equivalently increase.

    The laser is used to generate flashes of polarized light and directs them to a 5 micron disk surface area. The duration of a laser flash is 40 femtoseconds (billionths of a second), which is one hundred times less than the time it takes for the heads to change the magnetic field of the recording surface in devices that exist today. Thus, the technology can increase the recording speed by a factor of one hundred and in some way justifies research in the field of thermal magnetic recording (HAMR, heat-assisted magnetic recording).

    However, researchers still have to solve many problems before starting to create a really working prototype or even more so to promote the technology on the market. Firstly, the recording area of ​​5 microns is much larger than the half micron on which existing devices are capable of recording information. It is unlikely that users will be able to sacrifice a reduction in disk space (and a decrease in recording density will lead to a decrease in volume while maintaining the size and form factors of hard drives) for even such a high increase in recording speed. However, scientists are trying to reduce the recording area to 10 nanometers, but when they do it is not yet known. The second problem is that, despite the increase in write speed, the read speed will remain the same. And there are no technologies capable of increasing it yet. And finally According to physicist Julius Hohlfid (an employee at the Seagate research lab in Pittsburgh), the third problem is to create a laser capable of generating flashes lasting 40 fentoseconds. Today it is too expensive.

    But researchers have time to solve problems. Project co-author Daniel Stanciu predicts the appearance of a hard disk prototype working on thermal magnetic recording technology over a period of 10 years. The appearance of a commercial product is possible in 13-15 years. If by that time the existing technologies had exhausted themselves, then HAMR had chances. Time will tell.

    via Infoworld

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