This is the last hurdle for the transfer of 70% of IBM's magnetic hard drive business to Hitachi. What is significant is this represents an end of life cycle play for the magnetic hard industry. What's next? The two technologies I see racing toward market are optical (duh, we already have CD and DVD), let me be more precise, holographic optical, and nanotechnology storage.
The holo-cube has been an idea, then a reality in IBM labs. A one centimeter cube that has no moving parts and holds 10 GB of information. Read about it.
IBM has also developed a nanotechnology molecular-scale device in a project named "Millipede." To get an idea of just how encompassing the storage achievement is, IBM estimated that Millipede is dense enough to house 25 million printed textbook pages on a surface the size of a postage stamp. And it's rewritable! Read about it.
I have several articles on this page and this page. IBM research has an article that covers the history of IBM in magnetic media drives here. Search on the future of holographic storage technology
Get ready for an explosion in storage capacity during the next three years.
