I/O: not just spinning our wheels. (I/O with Mark & Hal).

By Mark Ferelli and Hal Glatzer

Mark: It seems that the next generation of hard disk drives will not only have higher capacity, but faster disk speeds, too.

Hal: Uh huh. Hitachi's shipping a drive that spins at 10,025 rpm.

Mark: What are the specs?

Hal: There are three 3.5-inch form-factor drives, with 36.9, 73.9, and 147.8GB capacities.

Mark: Maxtor's matching that. It's become the largest independent drive maker, since it acquired Quantum's drive business--and it's just announced a 10K-rpm offering, too. And it looks like a screamer. Maxtor's talking about a formatted capacity of 36, 73, and 146GB, in a 3.5-inch, low-profile format. And get this: The average seek time is 4.4 msec.

Hal: Hitachi's drives are spec'd at 4.9-5.4 msec average seek times. It'll take a machine to notice the difference.

Mark: And neither of us is--or has--such a machine.

Hal: Yep. With no test-bench here at CTR, we have to take the manufacturers' word for these things.

Mark: It's all made possible, of course, by adherence to UltraSCSI 320--Hal: Hitachi's drives have FACL capability, too.

Mark: That'll make them SAN-ready. I heard Hitachi is also bringing out 'a new line of 2.5-inch-form-factor, drives.

Hal: Right. It's shipping a 10, 20, 30, and 40GB drive in the 2.5-inch form factor, with 13 msec average seek times.

Mark: Now that 10,000 rpm is becoming ubiquitous some new 15,000 rpm drives are due out this year. I expect that 15K will start ramping up and will keep on ramping up through 2005. It's the next wave of rotational speed.

Hal: Of course, if IBM has it's way--Mark: It's obvious, now, that IBM isn't going to make HDDs any more. We called that, didn't we? So, what were you going to say about IBM? Was it "millipede?"

Hal: That's what IBM is touting, now: a sub-molecular storage device--still in the laboratory, I should note--that pushes alloy molecules around with much the same technology as 'a scanning, tunneling electron microscope.

Mark: IBM is definitely looking at that nano-level of technology to create--if not the next, then the next-after-the next--new storage devices.

Hal: Before that happens, we may finally see the "Blu ray." That's "blue," as in "blue laser diode," but without the

Mark: Or is that "blue" as in "singin' the blues?"

Hal: It could be. There's a consortium of nine, mostly Japanese optical storage companies that are working toward a 27GB removable disk system in the 120mm, CD/DVD form factor, using a blue-violet laser. With half the wavelength 'of red light, they can theoretically achieve about four times the storage capacity of a DVD, which is 4.7GB. Hitachi Ltd., LG Electronics Inc., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., Pioneer Corporation, Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Sharp Corporation, Sony Corporation, and Thomson Multimedia are all involved.

Mark: I'm interested in how close they are to fruition and what kind of performance specs they expect to achieve.

Hal: It hasn't left the lab. There's been work on blue lasers for more than 10 years; but 'the two big 'problems, having to do with the laserdiode, haven't been resolved yet. Either they can't make it small enough, or they can't make it reliable enough. It has to fit at the end of a drive head, and it has to last as long as the design-life, or market life, of the drive itself--meaning years.

Mark: Which makes me wonder, even if they solve those problems, can they make it cheap enough?

Hal: There's a good summary of what the Blu-Ray people are up to at one of Matsushita's websites: www.matsushita.co.jp/corp/news/official.data/data.dir/en020219-4/en02 0219-4.html.

Mark: If they can solve all those problems, there'll be a big. increase in capacity. But the market is demonstrating, quite clearly, that other factors are at least as important, and maybe more so. Look at scalability, transfer rates, the ability to automate in a jukebox.

Hal: The Blu-Ray people are projecting 36Mbps transfer rates.

Mark: Okay. But let's ask our readers: Is "capacity" still the be-all? If you think it is, email me at [e-mail]

Hal: I agree that other factors are critical in the market, so I won't challenge that. But let me ask our readers, instead, if they have inside information about Blu-Ray, or if they know of some other, innovative, new technology that could theoretcally take over from the HDD, one day. Email me at [e-mail].