Sony preps 5X boost to hard drive storage

Sony has revealed a new technology it says will make large hard drives possible even with notebooks. Rather than use a traditional magnetic read/write head, the new development uses a hybrid of magnetic and optical technology to greatly increase the density: while the storage itself is similar, media is written to disk using a laser. The extremely small, precise nature allows it to fit far more bits of data on any given area. A full terabit (125GB) can fit on a single square inch -- five times the space of conventional hard disks, Sony says.

[whateva]

160GB baby lets start the hype train.

[CrashSharc]

is Sony inadvertently fueling interest in DD with tech such as this. I'm a firm supporter of physical media, however I do believe DD will prevail down the line... far down the line. Things like this help... either way WOOHOOO!!!!

[mighty_douche]

Like you said DD is a long way off but dont you think Sony want to be ready for it. DD isnt only a M$ future, its everyones.

[Cwalat]

isnt a terabit 1000 GB?

[Cwalat]

@whateva

PSP 2, 160gb?

dude, they said its a NEW way of making it not cheaper way.

[Bleyd]

@1.3

That's a Terrabyte you're talking about. A traditional bit is 1/8th the size of a byte so a Terrabit would be about 125GB.

[marinelife9]

There goes Sony again. Off developing new technologies that are future proof and will actually mean something later on. Innovation at work.

[moparful99]

Imagine the implications... A 500 gig hard drive at 5x the storage capacity equals 2.5 terrabytes (2,500 gigs)!! Suddenly caching games to your hard drive seems so inocuous now... Hmmm yet again another evidence for the truth that the only thing constant is change.. Heres looking at you microsoft.....

[marinelife9]

One of these days you'll be able to slap one of those beast into your PS3 for extra storage capacity. Maybe Microsoft will even let you... never mind who am I kidding.

[ChickeyCantor]

16 GB dor PSP was around 300 euro's....160GB wil mostlikly cost 3000?XD

but sony keep up the good work =D

[sonarus]

in about 3yrs expect the ps3 slim to have this

[CrashSharc]

that's exactly what I was getting at ;)

[xplosneer]

I doubt this will happen for PSP as well as it is based on flash based Memory Sticks. Those capacities increase as transistor and silicon storage reciever and storage devices get smaller. This is based off the tranditional density based physical read write on a spinning disk.

[Creepa at GameManx]

500 GB 2.5 HD? BRING IT! my ps3 craves storage

FEED ME FEED ME FEED ME....NO HOMO

[Jen5en]

"Feed me a stray cat..."

[xhi4]

is key to success.

[IC Weiner]

Masturbation was the key to success :[

[tweaker]

This is amazing news. A terabyte PS3 would be sweet!

[gEnKiE]

Uh oh, here goes another thing for M$ fans to go against Sony about on how they "overhype" their products.

[clrlite]

haha, Sony is always innovating, or coming out with some wacky new technology. Half of it they probably dont even show to the public. I would love to have a TErabyte ps3 also! Awesome, I cant wait to see what they do in the next few years.

[Hapimeses]

My PS3 could do with one of those babies!

[Guwapo77]

This is simply amazing. Looks like those hologramwhatever hard drives will be put on the back burner for a few more years.

1.6TB PS3 and 4TB in PC...man thats a wholelotta porn!

[Kami]

not much if its HD.lol

[GETPWNZORED]

HD porn. My favorite. HAHA.

[Guwapo77]

That is 150 hours of porn in HD (on 1.6TB).

[GETPWNZORED]

Why 5 disagrees??? HD porn is NOT my favorite? But it is! WAAHHHH!!!!

[TH3 GAM3]

I'm wondering about the cost.

[xsteinbachx]

if you've have to ask you can't afford it.

[PumPum]

Good work Sony!
Its going to take atleast 5y before we see this tech avaivable for the average consumer.

[Rybnik]

Oddly enough, it will be prolly about 5 years before we see DD download full HD movies become widely feasible as will. See everyone wins! Oh 'cept for HDDVD, but we are tired of flogging that horse.

[xsteinbachx]

@10.1

i still get a chuckle out of it at times.

[GETPWNZORED]

Good thing, too. All those mandatory 5 gig installs are going to need to fit somewhere ;) Hehe.

[undacovabrothe]

Its only 2 games...

[xsteinbachx]

yahh.. that joke went no where.

[GETPWNZORED]

You must have missed that article about all those future games needing possible installs to match 360 loading speeds. What a shame...

[CrazedFiend]

Um, hello...

A terabyte is a whole hell of a lot more than 125GB. I think there's supposed to be a "0" in that baby somewhere. So let's see...if they're talking about 1TB (1000GB) per square inch, then I think you guys are undershooting your imagination a bit.

When was the last time you saw a 1 square inch hard drive (@_@)???

[moparful99]

Indeed it is easy to be mislead but they said TERRABIT the key being bit.. 1000 gigs equals 1 terraBYTE.. A terraBIT, as referenced by BLEYD in post 1.5, is roughly 1/8th the space of a terrabyte hence 125gigs... They are too close for the undescerning eye to catch but so is fact... They arent shrinking the size of the hard drive, just optimizing how much data can be stored on an inch of disk space. Expect the same physical sized hard drives but with alot more storage capabilities....

[Percy]

This is nothing new its heat assisted recording and its only one of the ways hdd manufacturers plan on increasing areal density. Others include parrelel recording which is currently having its start in seagate barracuddas and patterened media which is still a ways out. frankly do to the nature of a read write head the ability to strap a laser to the end and still maintain any kind of reliabilty is still a long ways out much further than current plans. I dont know why sony would even make a comment like this they dont currently and do not plan on making hard drives.

[hfaze]

"The extremely small, precise nature allows it to fit far more bits of data on any given area. A full terabit (125GB) can fit on a single square inch"

Tera-bit... eight bits in a byte. 125GB x 8 = 1000GB.

[nuked]

He says 1 Tb as in Terabit. NOT TB or Terabyte. Thats why it is 125 GB.

[VigorousApathy]

The article says 1.6 TB using the same design as today's 320 GB. So in that one it's Terabytes. It never uses TB as Terabits, although it does use the GB that comes after the mention of Terabits as Gigabits. Of course that's not even half as confusing as the part of the article that begins discussing Tuberculosis.

[moujahed]

Seems like sony is covering all angles. Gaming console, media format, television, now HDD... what's next?

[leon76]

SONY RULES!!!!!

[SlappyMcTaint]

Sony is always innovating. Following this news, M$ will announce their own "5x HD" technology, that will just end up burning all the way through the HD media and console and your shelf and floor. But they'll include a warranty so you can send in your burnt HD for a new one.

[Bleucrunch]

Sweeeeeeeeeet......now lets discuss price shall we?

[moparful99]

"A full terabit (125GB) can fit on a single square inch" This was pulled directly from the article. He concisely states terra bit, he may go on later to list TB which was a grammar error on his part but the consensus is clear that a terrabit and terrabyte are two different HDD... I can understand the confusion though as most people skim articles.. Thanks for pointing that out though... Bubbles fo you!

[PimpHandHappy]

and handy for a slim PS3

[Stubacca]

You can already get 500GB 2.5 SATA Hard-Drives for PS3s and notebooks already. So how is this going to change conventional media storage for owners for laptops and playstations?

I'm about to buy a 500GB SATA so I wanna know if I should hold off.

[DarkSniper]

Dark Sniper would suggest you at least hold off on buying a hard drive until the release of Home. Surely you'll have movies and music that you will want to share with your friends. So it would be important to have plenty of storage to upload what you want at your perfect convenience.

$niper

[Ares84]

Full terabit (124GB) what a dumb @ss!! 1TB = 1000GB

[GodsHand]

"A full terabit (125GB) can fit on a single square inch"

You are thinking of a terabyte = 1024GB.

[Gaara_724]

u even got a terabitye wrong 1000 gig its 1024 gig but he was onabout a terabit not terabite

[heyheyhey]

i can't help but laugh at the fact that you called someone a dumbass when... well you know

but yeah a byte is 8 bits, so a terabyte is 8 times larger than a terabit

[Spinitus]

u just owned ur self. hahahaha

[Pricey]

Not looking so good for flash drives, at the moment at least

[ravenguard88]

Flash drives are good for low power consumption and speed. Hard drives suck power, and putting a laser on it will just make it worse. It'll probably make it much slower as well due to it's nature, and I can't imagine how you could create something like this in a reliable manner at this point in time.

[travelguy2k]

is the fact that a 5400, 7200 rpm HDD will also read 5x faster without having to spin any faster, no extra heat and no extra power. This tech will blow away the uber expensive solidstate HDDs.

[Fux4Bux]

Awesome. Just hope this isn't one of those decade off things.

[Milky]

Sony come up with alot of stuff.

[Silellak]

Wow, that's pretty cool.

[ChickeyCantor]

"while the storage itself is similar, media is written to disk using a laser"

But lasers create lots of heat dont they?
but whatever, its cool what they are doing.

but what about cd's? can sony do the same without using " layers "

[feejo]

Yes baby, hope it will be more silent too.

[victorMaje]

This is exactly the kind of new technology Sony presents to consumers, knowing what they will need and use in the future, which is exactly what the PS3 is all about.

Nice going Sony!

[eagle21]

This product will stay on my radar!

[heyheyhey]

so when do i get my terabyte 2.5 drive then huh?

a playa needs space to store his henta... i mean anim... i mean films

[Crazyglues]

Not to mention games are starting to use the hard drive for loading stuff.. so I need my drive right now please... I already pretty much filled up the drive with demo's, music, movies... and I don't want to delete anything.

even though some of it I don't really need to save, but I just feel like the second I delete that sweet PS3 commercial explaining the PS3's power that I got in 1080p format I'm gonna miss it.. I don't know why you get so attach to the stuff you put on the drive but for some reason you do, or maybe that's just me...

I Like to show that commercial off on the plasma when friends come over.

Everything on my drive I need, it's all just really cool stuff.

[SuperSaiyan4]

Thats like Sony trying to make a car err dont think so its not their area.

Besides perhaps someone should tell Sony that better technology exists *cough* SSD *cough* (Solid State drives)

[travelguy2k]

What does Microsoft make?

and SSD is hugely expensive and small capacity, This should not cost much more than a regular HDD as its basically the same technology, plus it is backward combatable for all existing computers.

[cmrbe]

I read about another tech that was dubbed pixi dust that actually increases hard drive capacity a while ago. I wonder what happened to it. Anyways. Sony innovating as usual. Interesting they mentioned HD video. Yes people Sony is looking ahead as well. When i first heard of Blu i was in Uni 5 years ago. DVD was still new to my part of the world and i was really looking forward to when it arrives. I never really thought that it would arrive this soon. We might actually see this tech in the not so distant future. Excellent news indeed for people like me that needs to backup a boatload of data.

[GrimWarrior]

You have got to love Sony, man!!!

Sony = Future

... I know.. a bit fanboy-ish, but whatever..

GO SONY!!

[sumfood4u]

This $hit shoulda happened a long time ago! Leave it to Sony to Milk Customers! thats why i'm waiting til FFXIII or MGS4 hits before i purchase this magnificent machine!

[Rice]

So, sony what u gonna do next...

[va_bank]

This will fail. Solid State hard drives are the next step.

[moujahed]

You know it's gonna be ultra-expensive, just like with all of their products. Yet you really do get what you pay for... Go Xbo- whoops, I mean PS3.