Seagate is one of the leading actors on the hardrive market and its Barracuda 7200.10 series proudly dsplays the largest storage capacity on the market with its 750GB. This is just peanuts if we are to believe the latest information that says that Seagate has managed to create a whole new technology for lubricating the harddrive platters so that you can reduce the distance between the platters and the read/write head. Shorter distance between the read/write head and the platters makes it possible to increase the density of the of harddrive. The technology relies on millions of nanotubes that will be seated in a reservoir and lubricate the platters in the harddrive as the layer diminishes.
“Using nanotubes, Seagate’s patent involves coating the surface of a hard drive’s platter with an extremely thin layer of extremely tough lubricant. The lubricant is designed to protect the actual magnetic medium, which in itself ranges from 2 to 50nm in thickness.”
Even if the technology is hard to to get a grip of the result is a bit clearer. Seagate namely claims that its nanotube technology will result in capacities of up to 10 times higher than what harddrive can store today. I.e. potential for 7.5TB harddrives if we are to take Seagate’s own flagship as an example.
When this technology will be ready for the market is hard to say though and it will probably take a few years before we will see the fruits of Seagate’s labour. But it doesn’t seem like the mechanical harddrives will disappear in a long while as also Fujitsu seems to be working on a similar technology to increase the capacity of harddrives.
