Data storage is a tricky business as we are constantly looking for better ways to store our data and to do it quicker. When it comes to the typical hard drives that we use daily it is all about using a magnetic field against a spinning magnetic disk inside of an enclosure. While the idea of using solid state memory is growing the standard is still the platter format we have been using since – well the first hard drives, so finding better ways to get data onto those platter is still important.

So this news from researches at York University in Toronto, Canada, about finding an interesting new way to store data on those spinning disks is pretty interesting. Instead of the typical magnetic field being applied the researchers use a heat pulse which allows for terrabytes of data to be stored on the drive each second.

That’s terrabytes folks and at a hundred times faster speed than conventional methods.

Conventional magnetic recording technology works by applying an external magnetic field to the recording medium to invert the direction of its magnetic poles, with stronger fields producing faster recording.

However, the researchers demonstrated that the positions of the magnetic poles can be inverted by an ultrashort heat pulse, harnessing the power of much stronger internal forces of magnetic media.

via The Engineer

The team of researchers also included scientists from Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, Russia, Japan, and the Netherlands.

via SlashGear

The newest tool to make storing data on magnetic hard drives faster? Heat. is a post from: The Inquisitr

Data storage is always a topic of conversation when it comes to computers, laptops, tablets, and especially servers. IBM scientists are looking at a new experimental storage technique called magnetic memory.

With this new technique, they’ve figured out how to make it 100 times denser than hard drive storage already on the market which means that this could potentially pack in 100 times more storage in the same size.

Imagine something the size of a typical hard drive, but with the storage of 100TB or more. Very intriguing and could revolutionize data storage as we currently know it.

Via IBM:

“By taking a novel approach and beginning at the smallest unit of data storage, the atom, scientists demonstrated magnetic storage that is at least 100 times denser than today’s hard disk drives and solid state memory chips. Future applications of nanostructures built one atom at a time, and that apply an unconventional form of magnetism called antiferromagnetism, could allow people and businesses to store 100 times more information in the same space. ”

“The chip industry will continue its pursuit of incremental scaling in semiconductor technology but, as components continue to shrink, the march continues to the inevitable end point: the atom. We’re taking the opposite approach and starting with the smallest unit — single atoms — to build computing devices one atom at a time.” said Andreas Heinrich, the lead investigator into atomic storage at IBM Research – Almaden, in California.”

Very exciting research and if IBM can pull if off in a reliable package, we could see our next generation of data storage.

We Could Store 100 Times More Data With ‘Magnetic Memory’ Says IBM Scientists is a post from: The Inquisitr

For those of you that aren’t familiar with SSDs that is the acronym for Solid State Drives which are the best things to happen to computers since Moore made up some silly law.

Well, okay maybe not that great but for people who want their computers operating as fast as possible the standard IDE hard drives are actually pretty slow. Not so with SSDs because rather than writing data to physical hard disk platters the SSD writes it to flash ram which gives you a great big bump in accessing and writing data.

The big problem with SSD though is that it is expensive, very expensive. Granted the prices have been coming down but for the average they are still out of our price range. So this news from Intel that they are going to start shipping bigger solid state drive at lower prices is welcome news indeed.

These new drives, the SSD 320 Series, are coming soon in the following configuration:

• 40GB: $89
• 80GB: $159
• 120GB: $209
• 160GB: $289
• 300GB: $529
• 600GB: $1,069

There is a faster series, the 520 Series, but we don’t have a set of prices for them yet.

via CrunchGear

Speed freaks rejoice – Intel shipping bigger and cheaper SSDs is a post from: The Inquisitr

With external hard drives becoming common in many homes and offices these days, you don’t stand out from the crowd, unless of course you go for a hard drive that’s a little different.

Take for example the Back To The Future DeLorean 500GB external hard drive from Flash Rods.

The hard drive, as the name suggests, features a 1:!8 replica of the DeLorean from Back To The Future, complete with opening hood and gull wing doors.

As a hard drive it’s not super cheap at $250, but would a normal hard drive look this cool?

Ordering details here.

Back To The Future DeLorean Hard Drive is a post from: The Inquisitr

Seagate Senior Product Manager Barbara Craig put rumors to rest this morning, announcing that the company is currently working on a 3TB hard drive which they plan to release later this year.

We’ve learned that Seagate developers have run into a few obstacles, including a snag in which only 64-bit Operating system users can take advantage of the larger drives…sorry XP folks.

According to Seagate, they ran into a hiccup with 32-bit systems and their Logical Block Addressing (LBA) standard which was developed in the 80′s and can only support up to 2.1TB. However Windows 7 and Vista users with 64-bit systems don’t have to worry about LBA restrictions. Some modified Linux systems will also be able to take advantage of the larger drives.

Sure there may be issues, but at least Seagate is telling only premium system users they will be able to access the drives, rather than focusing on shoving information on platforms that may not be as stable for their use. Good for you Seagate. [via Thinq]

Seagate Confirms, 3TB Hard Drive Arriving In 2010 is a post from: The Inquisitr

For “green friendly” computer users Samsung has debuted their F3EG hard drive, a unit capable of storing up to 2TB of information on four 500GB platters, while using Samsung EcoTriangle technology, a system setup around eco-friendly components, low power output and noise reducing technologies.

The drive includes the removal of halogen compounds and uses a brominated flame retardant casing from the PCBA. It also offers a 0% failure rate when tested against unstable voltage environments.

The drive also offers a 3.0Gbps SATA interface, a Native Command Queuing feature and a buffer of 16MB/32MB.

The drives start at $179.99, plus you’ll get the added savings of a green friendly, low power consuming setup. [SlipperyBrick]

Samsung Debuts EcoGreen F3EG Hard Drive is a post from: The Inquisitr

Transcend has just announced their newest external hard drive system, the Transcend 1.5TB StoreJet 35T. It’s not the flashiest hard drive, but it promises ease of use and top notch security for personal and business reasons.

The drive offers write speeds up to 42MB/s and comes equipped with a backup feature that can easily be accessed with one-touch.

The 35T also features StoreJet Elite software with 256-bit AES file and folder encryption that will protect your data from even sophisticated hacks.

No word yet on the pricing for the hard drive or even when it will be available, but Transcend tends to lock in on the cheap side so this is one I’m keeping my eyes open for.

Transcend 1.5TB StoreJet 35T External HDD Debuts With One Touch Backup is a post from: The Inquisitr

Dane-Elec has just announced their newest line of So SuperSpeed hard drives. The new external offerings feature both standard hard drives and Solid State Disks (SSDs) with USB 3.0 high speed data transfer abilities.

USB 3.0 is able to reach speeds of 250MBps, nearly ten times faster than the old USB 2.0 standard.

The external drives range in size from 500GB to 2TB for the standard drives and SSDs come in 80GB and 160GB capacities.

The drives arrive on December 11th with the 500GB HDD running $180 and the SSD’s coming in at $400 and $800 respectively. [Electronista]

Dane-Elec Announces So SuperSpeed Hard Drives And SSDs With USB 3.0 is a post from: The Inquisitr

Apple just added quite a bit of extra storage to their Time Capsule hard drives.  The external units now offer up to 2TB of available space for $499.  As a result of the new addition the 1TB units are now selling at $299, the original price of a 500GB unit.  In the meantime I’ll stick with $100 1TB drives from Western Digital. [via Apple]

Apple Starts Selling 2TB Time Capsule. Price Drop For 1TB Units is a post from: The Inquisitr

Of course it was inevitable – only a matter of when not if one of the hard drive manufacturers would crack the 2Terabyte range of hard drive size – with the award going to Western Digital. The company announced the immediate availability of the 2TB Caviar Green hard drive at a price of $299.00 – I can still remember when that kind of price wouldn’t even get you close to a 500MB hard drive the size of a briefcase.

As well the drive is being labelled as part of their eco-friendly green range of hard drives and with some pre-release testing by HotHardware it performed against some of it’s competitors. Turns out this monster does well in tests against the Samsung Spinpoint F1 and Seagate’s Barracuda 7200.11

All I know is that I would love to have a couple of those sitting in my worn out system – it would give me some bragging rights for at least a couple of months.

[pic and hat tip to engadget]

Cracking the 2TB hard drive territory is a post from: The Inquisitr

The unwanted addition to the factory fresh computer is from the W32/Usbalex family which is triggered by a file called recycle.exe that sits on the D: drive. the moment you access the D: drive on an infected machine this recycle.exe is launched which then tries to infect the main C: drive. Additionally another worm called W32.Gammima.AG has been found on some machines.

The following models are believed to be the bearer of this wormy goodness

Model: EEEBOXB202-B UPC:610839761807

Model: EEEBOXB202-W UPC:610839761814

Model: EBXB202BLK/VW161DUPC: 610839530526

Model: EBXB202WHT/VW161D-W UPC: 610839531202

Model: EBXB202BLK/VK191T UPC: 610839547753

Now Asus has confirmed that some machines have been shipped that contain these additional goodies and in the press release about this incident (translated from Japanese) they have apologized for this happening. Granted apologies are good and they are doing what they can via their support site but come on guys two incidents like this is just unacceptable. I think Asus is going to have to do some serious work on their quality control but even still this isn’t going to be very helpful to their brand name.

Asus Messes Up – Again is a post from: The Inquisitr