IBM Boosts Storage Density Record, 3/31/95, by Cathryn Conroy
 
  IBM Corp. today said it has demonstrated in laboratory tests a new world
record for magnetic-data storage density of three billion bits, which is
nearly five times the density of the most advanced disk available today,
reports The Wall Street Journal.
  The new density of three billion bits means that the text of 375 average-
sized novels could be stored in a single square inch of disk surface.
If those same novels were stored on double-spaced typewritten pages, it would
take a stack of paper 62.5 feet tall, which is higher than a five-story
building.
  The advance was achieved by refining, shrinking, and improving magneto-
resistive recording heads and ultra-low-noise thin-film magnetic hard disks.
  IBM said a product with the new storage density would be available in three
to five years.

17 responses total.

Hmmm, let's work that out. 62.5 feet is 750 inches. A piece of standard
20lb bond is .004" per sheet. That works out to 187,500 pages. If they
are assuming a vertical line spacing of 6 lines per inch, that's 33 lines
per page, and assuming 1" margins, let's figure 60 characters per line.

So that works out to 187500 * 33 * 60 = 371,250,000 characters, X 8 bits
per character = 2.97 billion bits. Pretty close.

Also a great waste of paper. Most printed material is double-sided,
single-spaced, and tighter spacing. So using real world values, I think a
stack of paper 10 feet tall is alot closer to reality.

(I was going to jump on the expression "density of three billion bits",
since "three billion bits" is not a density, but I presume from the
context that that is "per square inch", although not stated. Is it?)

  Certainly not explicitly, but the second paragraph strongly implies that.
Glad to see they're still making breakthroughs...looks like ever-lowering
drive prices won't disappear any time soon!

Yeah, Rane, i caught that too. I'm assuming they mean "per square inch"
too. That's the problem with non-technical writers attempting to
report on a technical subject. The jargon always gets distorted along
the way.

  In other really-neat-gadget news....
 
  I just read that a bunch of CD player manufacturers (computer & audio)
are backing a new "MultiMedia CD" standard jointly proposed by Sony and
Philips: "The MMCD format accommodates up to 7.4GB of data and is
compatible with existing CD-ROMs. The discs based on the standard can
hold movies ranging up to 4-1/2 hours in length."
 
  I also saw a really cool mini-cassette tape backup system in PC mag,
that stores a gig of data on a postage-stamp-sized tape (length & width;
it looked about 1/8 or 1/4 inch thick).  One of the reviewer's
criticisms was that the tapes were too small to label meaningful. :)
I think Sony also made the drive mechanism for that, intended for
digital audio use, but adapted for computer use by the US company
making the backup system.
 
  What other cool new technotoys have folks heard of lately?

        One of the trade rags announced that IBM has designed a 256 megabyte
memory chip.  It won't be in production for 3 years, though.

that should be megaBIT, shouldn't it?

        No.  Not according to the trade rag.

I doubt it. Trade rags don't always get all the details right.

        That's true.  I did make a point of checking and rechecking, because
"256 mega*bytes*" seemed odd to me, too.  That's what the article said.
Unfortunately I cannot remember what rag I got this from.

Heard something about a company unveiling a 120 Meg 3.5" disk format.  I
forget the company, but they expect to ship machines with these drives,
which are backwards compatible with current formats, by the end of the
year.  I wish I could find the article I'm thinking of.  They refused to
reveal any details about how the thing worked...my guess is some kind of
'floptical' system.

Iomega has just released their new "Zip" drives. They store 96megs on
a disk that is a little larger than the 3.5" format. I think they are
4 inches and they're a little thicker than 3.5" floppies. The drive has
a 35ms access time and a transfer rate of 15mbyte per minute. They
are available in either parrallel port or SCSI-2 models . The drive is 
$199.95 and the disks are 19.95. Floptical disks are about the same price,
but they only store 20meg.

I was reading something about Bernoulli drives with a 230Mb capacity in some
catalog.  Buy five disks, get the dirve free, only $600...

  The ZIP drives seem to have a good initial cost and cost/mb.  If
SyQuest wasn't already a de facto standard among service bureaus,
I wonder which current platform would be most popular.
  Btw, on the non-removable storage front, I've seen two new SCSIs
that have broken the 20 cent/megabyte barrier.  One was a 4 gig
for $700 (heard of it, dunno details), and another was a 1.3 gig
for $259 (no-name, but decent-looking SCSI-2).

Wow you guys knew when zip came out.  I bet all of the new CD-RWs and DVD-Rs
made you think, eh?

CD-R and CD-RW are great...I rarely use my Zip drive anymore.  I'm holding
off on DVD-R until they settle on one format and the price comes down.

Very wise.  I think I'm going to wait for that too.

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