Solid-state drives are very dependable and the go-to storage solution for phones and most PCs and laptops. But the mechanical drive still comes in handy for many applications. When users require a lot of storage without shelling out a lot of money, they’re the best bet.
And, they might not become completely redundant in the future, thanks to a breakthrough from Cambridge University. Using graphene, the researchers replaced the carbon-based overcoat (COC) on several hard drives. A COC protects the platter where data is stored, from wear and tear due to its head and other factors.
Increasing storage by a huge margin
To develop high-density drives, manufacturers have reduced the space between the two components. Over time, the COC layer on most HDDs has to be trimmed down to 3nm, making the current storage density around 1TB per square inch.
The team of researchers took it to the limits by using graphene’s heat resistance. It allowed them to use another budding technology known as Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR). It enables a platter to hold more data when heated. This is something not seen of conventional COC.
Merging these technologies might result in new HDDs with a storage density between 4 and 10 TB per square inch. More than amplifying their storage capacity, graphene HDDs are more resilient as well. The researchers noticed a single layer of the material reduced corrosion by 2.5 times.
Will the technology make out of the lab?
The friction was also reduced and it was sturdier than the current top-end solutions. Speaking of hard drives, reliability is also imperative just as storage capacity, something that could attract big cloud operators like Google towards the new technology.
However, it could see a similar fate as other graphene-related breakthroughs that have happened since 2004. Most of these applications haven’t made it out of the labs and yet to become a widely used technology.
