Table Salt Could Help Boost HDD Storage Density By a Factor of 5

hypnosec writes "A team of researchers has managed to boost storage density on traditional magnetic platters as high as 3.3 terabits per square inch using a technique that relies on NaCl — table salt. (Comparatively, a recent 4TB Seagate drive had an areal density of 625Gb per square inch.) A research team used a technique called nanopatterning to create arrays of magnetic bits that have more regular features (PDF) than the current traditional, randomly distributed technique. Team leader Joel Yang compares the technique to a well known traveling trick; 'It's like packing your clothes in your suitcase when you travel. The neater you pack them the more you can carry.' Yang said, 'In the same way, the team of scientists has used nanopatterning to closely pack more of the miniature structures that hold information in the form of bits, per unit area.'"

Re:Metaphors

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The rest of the conversation has been edited out, but it related seek times to finding shoes that match your outfit.

This post makes me feel like I'm reading a Douglas Adams book. Well done.

Re:Important note:

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Took me a minute becuase the article was very difficult for me to read (navy font against a lighter blue background, brilliant) but all they did was add table salt (in aqueous solution I'm sure) to the developing chemicals in the etching process. That's interesting from a chemistry persepective; it implies they may be able to even higher densities by fiddling around with that catalyst- in stead of salt maybe they add shrimp cocktail to the process and get peta byte capacities or something.

Re:Important note:

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If my math is right, Planck's length as your resolution limit gives you 6.187x10^34 possible marking positions per meter of stick, which means you can encode about 115 bits with one mark on a 1m Planck-grade stick.