The Future of Data Storage
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2017-05-06
·
1,115 words · ~5 min read
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what's in the works for the future of computer data storage I mean we've gone
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from 2 gabt to 2 terabytes being a
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typical amount of PC storage in less than 20 years a thousandfold increase so
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are things just going to keep becoming exponentially more capacitors why don't
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we start answering this question with a look at our old friend the mechanical
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hard drive already there are a number of
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Technologies in the works that will make hard drives more spacious while still
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allowing them to fit in that familiar 3 and 1/2 in enclosure hard drive makers
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like Seagate and Western Digital are working on Technologies such as shingled
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magnetic recording which overlaps data tracks to essentially make them narrower
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bit patterned media which can encode one bit of data to just one magnetic grain
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instead of a group and heat assisted magnetic recording or hammer
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which heats up small areas of the hard disk allowing the magnetic grains
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themselves that store the data to be a lot smaller and you can learn more about
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hammer in this video here these Technologies are expected to help push
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hard drive capacities to 50 terabytes by
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the year 2020 wow but aside from changing how
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magnetic platter data recording Works manufacturers are also looking at using
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more exotic materials hard drives filled with helium instead of good oldfashioned
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air are already on the market since
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helium is less dense than air there's less fluid resistance when the drive
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platters spin meaning more precise positioning of the Reed right head with
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lower power consumption and all of this without making your mp3 sound like the
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singer just sucked air from a balloon of
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course by this point you may have moved off of hard drives in favor of ssds in
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which case you might be more interested in Intel and micron's 3D Cross Point
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which features very dense Arrangements of memory cells that don't require
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transistors leading to higher capacities 3D Cross Point will also have latencies
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up to a, times lower than traditional
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nand and will last for much longer than a conventional SSD meaning we could see
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drives much bigger and faster than what we have today and Samsung is also
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working on a competing technology called zand though they're being uh quite tight
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lipped about how it works but we're not
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just restricted to making traditional hard drives larger or making smaller and
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smaller transistors for our ssds there's
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holographic data storage that takes the concept of a dual layer optical disc to
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a completely new dimension instead of just storing data in a two-dimensional
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pattern of what are effectively pits in the the surface holographic discs can
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store data in threedimensional patterns
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using nearly the entire thickness of the disc in fact multi-terabyte single diss
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may be available at some point though
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progress on actually getting holographic storage to Market has been agonizingly
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slow and unfortunately the Jedi Council only existed very far away and very long
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ago so they're not really around to show us how holocrons work but although none
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of us actually have mitoch chlorians in our blood the farther flung future of
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data storage might be inside our own
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bodies I'm talking about DNA the
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chemical that stores your entire genetic code down to that weird mole on your
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butt so if you think back to high school biology you might remember that each
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base pair of your DNA is either at or GC
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meaning that DNA could be used as a
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digital storage medium with each base pair corresponding to a one or a zero
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biologists have been synthesizing DNA in the lab for quite a few years for tons
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of different applications so perhaps it shouldn't be that surprising that
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scientists are looking at it as a way to store data other than your genome a
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single cubic millimeter of DNA can hold
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over 685 terabytes of data so just think of
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of how many games videos and dank memes
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a DNA Drive could hold one day even if
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it were only the size of a modern SD card DNA is also very stable and could
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hold data for millions of years making it potentially a great choice for
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archival storage down the line but hold on a minute lonus how do you retrieve
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information from a puddle well although
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scientists work with DNA in liquid form don't scoff at the concept of liquid
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state storage researchers have recently used clusters of nanop particles only
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about five microns wide about the same size as your typical bacterium suspended
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in a fluid to hold huge amounts of data I'm talking one terabyte in only a
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tablespoon this works by using small temperature changes to rearrange these
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nanop particles to different states and since each cluster of these particles
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can have millions of different states not just the binary zero and one we're
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all used to liquid state storage could reach capacities that just aren't
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possible with present-day Tech no word
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though on when liquid drives might hit the market or if you'll have to buy them
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