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Laser Heat Used to Make HDD Write Transfers Faster

By - Source: Science Daily | B 41 comments

Researchers have discovered that recording data on a HDD platter using a quick laser burst is much faster than the traditional use of a magnetic field.

Researchers at the University of York's Department of Physics have discovered a way to record data on an old-school mechanical hard drive without using a magnetic field. Instead, they used laser heating which processes information much faster on a magnetic medium (platter in this case) than current means used in today's drives. This discovery should not only make future magnetic recording devices perform much faster, but also more energy efficient.

"This revolutionary method allows the recording of Terabytes (thousands of Gigabytes) of information per second, hundreds of times faster than present hard drive technology," said York physicist Thomas Ostler in a paper published in the February edition of the Nature Communications journal. "As there is no need for a magnetic field, there is also less energy consumption."

In the paper, Ostler describes a system that uses a sub-picosecond laser pulse to quickly heat the magnetic medium to around 800 degrees Celsius for a brief moment. This heating significantly speeds up the process of reversing the magnetic polarity of a particular bit. Current hard drives use an external magnetic field applied to a spinning magnetic medium to invert the polarity of the two magnetic poles.

An experimental image supplied to Science Daily shows two nano islands that have different magnetic orientations. After the islands are hit with a single laser pulse, the magnetic direction of both islands changes. By the fourth pulse, they've returned to their initial state.

"For centuries it has been believed that heat can only destroy the magnetic order," said Dr. Alexey Kimel, from the Institute of Molecules and Materials, Radboud University Nijmegen. "Now we have successfully demonstrated that it can, in fact, be a sufficient stimulus for recording information on a magnetic medium."

The team of scientists behind the discovery include researchers from Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, Russia, Japan and the Netherlands. The experimental work was conducted at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland, the Ioffe Physical Technical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands.

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  • 10 Hide
    ochentay4 , February 9, 2012 9:54 AM
    Nice, bring it on!
  • Display all 41 comments.
  • 7 Hide
    ojas , February 9, 2012 9:57 AM
    good, now where's my 1PB RAID 1 array? :D 
  • 5 Hide
    amk-aka-Phantom , February 9, 2012 9:59 AM
    Goodbye, SSDs :D 
  • 20 Hide
    amk-aka-Phantom , February 9, 2012 9:59 AM
    Wait... what about read speeds?
  • -2 Hide
    dcdc1 , February 9, 2012 10:05 AM
    isn't that how minidisc works/worked?
  • -4 Hide
    dcdc1 , February 9, 2012 10:09 AM
    dcdc1isn't that how minidisc works/worked?

    ah - didn't read it properly - seems a bit like minidisc but without the magnetic head.
  • 7 Hide
    rolflorenz , February 9, 2012 10:27 AM
    800 degrees Celsius O_O
    If a write a full disk in one go then I can make a BBQ as well, great news!!! xD
    I wonder what would happen if a make a copy of a full RAID, ROFL
  • 0 Hide
    virtualban , February 9, 2012 10:48 AM
    will the new drives be resistant to floods and price increases in contrast to all tech trends?
  • 0 Hide
    cmartin011 , February 9, 2012 11:05 AM
    imagine how HOT a hard drive would become using this tech... at least there would be less of a chance of a head crash i imagine now how would it go about helping reads?
  • 5 Hide
    drwho1 , February 9, 2012 11:13 AM
    This sounds promising.

    I wonder is hard drives have been traditionally rated by rotational speed (5400/5900/7200/10000) RPM's
    then, how would they be rated now when/if this technology makes it to the consumer?

    Will this laser allow for multiple recordings on hard drives?

    What about Disk Defragmenting?

    Like some asked: What about read speeds?
    Would it boot faster than a hard drive?
    Would speed be comparable or better than SSD's?

    More importantly:
    When this drives make it to the consumer, Will I be able to keep all my body parts?
    and... Will my wallet suffer?
  • 3 Hide
    w3k3m , February 9, 2012 11:24 AM
    This is nice, but there is a problem: they found out how to write data, but they have no applicable way yet to READ it. They are using a scanning tunneling electron microscope for that and these are room sized devices. So don't get too excited, it will take a long time until we see such devices on shelves.


  • 2 Hide
    freggo , February 9, 2012 11:27 AM
    Very interesting. But do I get this right, it will "only" speed up the writing of data, not the reading of course !?
    Not that faster write speeds are not appreciated !!
  • 4 Hide
    w3k3m , February 9, 2012 11:44 AM
    @freggo

    There is no read yet, this technology is still in diapers, basically they were just experimenting with lasers and "reading" the results with ST microscope. It's more just a demonstration, it is way too early to talk about practical application. There are many more problems to be solved.
  • 2 Hide
    nikorr , February 9, 2012 11:47 AM
    Cool.
  • 5 Hide
    CaedenV , February 9, 2012 11:55 AM
    While this technology would be great for people like me who need sequential throughput, I fail to see how this would help the average person because it will still have the same seek time as other platter-based drives today. Remember, sequential throughput on a HDD is not all that bad (120-150MB/s); it is when things are not sequential that thing go to hell (30-60MB/s).

    Also, I find it hard to believe that it would take less power to heat a platter than to aim a small radio at it. Besides, would this not wear out the media having so many localized temperature variations? I mean, it is cool tech, but hard to believe it would work 'as advertised'.
  • 0 Hide
    back_by_demand , February 9, 2012 12:15 PM
    Very interesting, all we need now is for the rest of the system to work at that speed, that fast your RAM and CPU would be a bottleneck
  • 1 Hide
    nukemaster , February 9, 2012 12:29 PM
    dcdc1ah - didn't read it properly - seems a bit like minidisc but without the magnetic head.

    Not going to lie, first thing came to mind as well.

    This is laser only for writing, while MD used a laser for heat and magnetic to write then read with the laser alone.

    Still make me think of MD for sure.
  • 2 Hide
    danwat1234 , February 9, 2012 12:44 PM
    How does this technology relate to HAMR (Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording)?
  • 3 Hide
    willard , February 9, 2012 12:45 PM
    caedenvRemember, sequential throughput on a HDD is not all that bad (120-150MB/s)

    Only the fastest mechanical drives in the world are that fast, and only when the data is both sequential and at the edge of the platter for maximum rotational velocity on the platter. This is obviously a fairly rare occurrence.

    Quote:
    it is when things are not sequential that thing go to hell (30-60MB/s).Also, I find it hard to believe that it would take less power to heat a platter than to aim a small radio at it.

    Generating magnetic fields actually requires considerably more power than a picosecond pulse of a laser.

    Quote:
    Besides, would this not wear out the media having so many localized temperature variations? I mean, it is cool tech, but hard to believe it would work 'as advertised'.

    The amount of energy being delivered is very small. Metal is remarkably elastic, and not all metals are subject to fatigue (getting weaker after repeated small stresses). This will probably be one of the easier problems for them to solve.
  • 2 Hide
    mcd023 , February 9, 2012 1:11 PM
    wonder how it feels to take an assumed scientific fact that has been believed to be true for over a hundred years and make it do the opposite of what everyone has been saying it would do. Granted, it took a lot of researchers to do it and I don't think that they turned the principle on its head, but they still got it to do the opposite of what was thought. pretty cool.
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