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Data Storage Technology

New Lubricant Leads To Faster Hard Drives 365

Posted by timothy from the sloopery dept.
azav writes "We all know about Moore's Law as it applies to chip speed but little attention is publicly made to the challenges of increasing speed in hard drives. A recent discovery in polyester (yes, polyester, you disco baby) lubricants will allow for faster and longer lasting hard drives."
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New Lubricant Leads To Faster Hard Drives More

New Lubricant Leads To Faster Hard Drives

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  • FIRST ANAL "HARD DRIVE" LUBRICANT POST! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 29, 2004 @04:50PM (#10104665)
    nyah

  • Wow... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 29, 2004 @04:50PM (#10104668)
    Lubricants and "Faster, Longer Lasting hard drives."

    Sounds like some of the spam I get every day... cue all the bad jokes.

    • Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 29, 2004 @04:55PM (#10104708)
      I swear most slashdot readers must either be 15, or never have sex. Once someone uses the word lubricants, everyone gets giddy...

      • Re:Wow... (Score:2, Funny)

        by sqrt(2) ( 786011 )
        Check, and check. Yup that's everyone.

      • Re:Wow... (Score:5, Funny)

        by DrGonzo1138 ( 800124 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @05:04PM (#10104761) Homepage
        "I can't even say titmouse without giggling like a school girl"
        -Homer Simpson

      • Re:Wow... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Spudley ( 171066 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @05:29PM (#10104883) Homepage Journal
        You've got to admit that the innuendo in that headline is... um... somewhat unsubtle.

        To be honest, I always suspected the term "hard drive" was invented as a sick inside joke by computer geeks, (along with a few other very suspect phrases).

        But what really convinced me was when I went to South Africa and discovered that a 3.5" floppy disk is known over there as a "stiffy disk". Ostensibly, the original idea was to differentiate them from the older 5.25" floppies, but you've got to admit that whoever came up with that one must have known what he was doing.

        I'm not usually one to laugh at blatant innuendo, but the first few times I heard that phrase being used, it absolutely cracked me up - not just for the phrase itself, but for the fact that no-one else seemed to get the joke. To them the phrase is completely natural: A South African computer geek can get away with telling people that he's got a stiffy in his pocket, and it won't even raise a smirk.

        (having said that, it's been a while since I've used a stif... uh, a 3.5" floppy, so I can't be sure the phrase is still current - SA readers, feel free to correct me)

        • Re:Wow... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Jeremi ( 14640 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @06:11PM (#10105119) Homepage
          I'm not usually one to laugh at blatant innuendo, but the first few times I heard that phrase being used, it absolutely cracked me up - not just for the phrase itself, but for the fact that no-one else seemed to get the joke


          I'm told that Australians have a similar reaction when they hear people talking about getting "root access"...

          • Re:Wow... (Score:3, Informative)

            by dcam ( 615646 )
            Australians also laugh when Europeans come over and start talking about routers, pronounced as rooters. For the same reason.

          • Re:Wow... (Score:3, Informative)

            by TapeCutter ( 624760 )
            We Aussies also have a very different meaning for the word "fanny" than you do in the US.

        • Re:Wow... (Score:3, Funny)

          by gl4ss ( 559668 )
          *But what really convinced me was when I went to South Africa and discovered that a 3.5" floppy disk is known over there as a "stiffy disk". Ostensibly, the original idea was to differentiate them from the older 5.25" floppies, but you've got to admit that whoever came up with that one must have known what he was doing.*

          in finland, a 5.25" floppy is called 'lerppu'(roughly translates to 'floppy'). 3.5" being called 'korppu'(translates to a hard biscuit like thingy).

          too bad korppu doesn't sound so fun as s

        • Re:Wow... (Score:4, Funny)

          by azav ( 469988 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @06:41PM (#10105258) Homepage Journal
          And in South Africa, White Out is NOT called White Out.

          Forget exactly what it is called though.

        • Re:Wow... (Score:3, Interesting)

          by inflex ( 123318 )
          Having also lived in ZA for a few years, the other thing that cracked me up was the way they pronounce 'router'. In ZA, they pronounce it as 'r-oo-ter', as if you were pronouncing 'hooters'. In Australia, 'root' is another term for sex. I personally preferred to pronounce it as 'r-out-er'.

          PLD.

        • Crossword. (Score:5, Funny)

          by Grendel Drago ( 41496 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @08:49PM (#10105787) Homepage
          One time, I was doing a crossword.

          DI_K

          12. Can be floppy or hard.

          Couldn't make this sort of thing up if I tried.

          --grendel drago

      • Re:Wow... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by NanoGator ( 522640 )
        "I swear most slashdot readers must either be 15, or never have sex. Once someone uses the word lubricants, everyone gets giddy... "

        Giddy? Nah. I see a bunch of people trying to be a comedian, though.

      • Re: Wow ... (Score:5, Funny)

        by John Jorsett ( 171560 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @06:50PM (#10105299)
        I swear most slashdot readers must either be 15, or never have sex.

        We have a winner ...

      • well im far beyond 15, but the words "faster", "longer", "hard", and "lubricants" in the same sentence does make me laugh a bit.

        • The challanger... (Score:5, Funny)

          by MachDelta ( 704883 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @09:54PM (#10106138)
          Heh, a while ago I read a guide on HardOCP [hardocp.com] about how to install a blowhole in the top of your computer case. It had one sentence that went like so:
          "I know I am anal enough that if my blowhole were cocked to one side, it would drive me nuts. (Show me another non-sexual sentence that uses "anal, cocked, blowhole, and nuts" and you will have my props.)
          This story title doesn't use those exact words, but surely getting four sexual innuendos in any sort of casual sentence is a worthy accomplishment. :)

    • Re:Wow... (Score:3, Funny)

      by mikael ( 484 )
      Lubricants and "Faster, Longer Lasting hard drives."
      And always remember to use protection. You wouldn't want to catch a nasty virus.

    • Re:Wow... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Fulcrum of Evil ( 560260 )

      Lubricants and "Faster, Longer Lasting hard drives."

      Seeing as how a lot of them will be stuffed full of porn, it seems somehow appropriate.

  • Big deal... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Junta ( 36770 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @04:50PM (#10104669)
    I am constantly bombarded about emails promising 'longer lasting hard drives' something about pills or herbs, this is nothing new.

  • Hmm (Score:2, Funny)

    by bigberk ( 547360 )
    "lubricants will allow for faster and longer lasting ..."
    Funny, my girlfriend agrees!

    • Insightful! (Score:5, Funny)

      by tunabomber ( 259585 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @05:19PM (#10104835) Homepage
      Yes, every girlfriend loves a speedy hard drive! After all, it allows her to perform everyday computing tasks, such as finding the MS Word document she's looking for or installing a new version of Quicken.

      This new lubricant will allow the the hard disk to go faster because it will form an interface between the moving parts and the part of the head that touches them. The smooth, slippery, evenly-coated moving parts will slide much more easily against the head, prolonging its life.
      Really, this is one magnificent technological achievement.

      And to think, all the comments I've read so far have been pornographic innuendos made by "+1, Funny"-hording neanderthals. But your post, on the other hand....

      I just re-read it. nevermind....

  • Maybe they just need some... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Fnkmaster ( 89084 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @04:51PM (#10104676)
    of this [astroglide.com]?

  • My hard drive speed... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cornelius Chesterfie ( 604463 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @04:51PM (#10104678)
    With this, my hard drive speed increased a lot, if you know what I mean, and I think you do!

    However, I don't know about "longer lasting". I guess it depends on the person. Mine becomes a floppy after 2 minutes.

  • Hmm? (Score:4, Funny)

    by sqrt(2) ( 786011 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @04:51PM (#10104680) Journal
    What are you selling? Hard drives or sex jelly?

  • New lubricant leads to faster pr0n on hard drives...

    </ducks>

  • Faster Hard Drives? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hard Drive Speed doesn't seem to be the problem... S-ATA suits me just fine.

    What I really worry about is hard drives not getting any bigger. It seems progress has stopped at about 350 - 400gig and no prospect of going anywhere.

    • Re:Faster Hard Drives? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by damiam ( 409504 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @04:59PM (#10104739)
      SATA is the speed of the bus from the hard drive, not the actual drive. You'd currently need a RAID cluster of drives to fill the SATA bus.

      And hard drive speed does matter, a huge amount. Unless you have a crapload of RAM and everything you use is cached, 90% of the time you spend waiting for programs to start up or large files to be read is waiting for the HD to read the data. A faster HD can make a computer feel much snappier than a slow one.

    • Uh, I can remember when 150 or 175GB was the biggest you could buy. Ya know, that was what, a whole 6 months ago or something?

    • Internal speed is the problem, not interface (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      S-ATA, P-ATA or one of the multiple SCSI interfaces, all are not maxed out until you put multiple disks (and in S-ATA that is impossible, by design, P-ATA just sucks at that and the only worth naming is SCSI, that was designed with that in mind). The issue is the mechanical speed. For a single disk, all interfaces are faster than the platters and heads can read or write sequentially. Think about heads that can move quicker from one place to another and disks that turn faster, thus allowing to have better pe

    • Re:Faster Hard Drives? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Tesko ( 719892 )
      Actually, no, the biggest one out (the 400gb one) has 5 80GB platters. But another major manufacturer is using 100GB platters in one if it's hard drives. I can't remember the manufacturers/hard drive models for the life of me. I can't wait for 20,000 RPM S-ATA Drives to hit the streets.

    • Re:Faster Hard Drives? (Score:5, Funny)

      by 88NoSoup4U88 ( 721233 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @05:13PM (#10104808)
      "What I really worry about is hard drives not getting any bigger."

      The women keep telling us 'size doesn't matter'.

    • Re:Faster Hard Drives? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by at_18 ( 224304 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @05:18PM (#10104830) Journal
      Hard drives are pathetically slow. A seek takes 10 milliseconds, that's a factor of almost a million slower than a random memory access. The biggest noticeable delays (boot up time, firefox load time, open office load time, etc.) are all caused by the slow hard disk. Transfer speeds, which are now approaching 50MB/sec, are good enough. And size is still going up: two years ago 120 GB, one year ago 250 GB, this year 400 GB. No sign of slowing.

  • Drive Heat (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Klar ( 522420 ) * <curchin@g m a i l .com> on Sunday August 29, 2004 @04:52PM (#10104688) Homepage Journal
    My laptop runs cool, except for the left palm rest, where the hard drive is inside the case. After a few hours of gaming, it can be VERY hot. Would better lube allow for portable drives to run cooler?

    • Re:Drive Heat (Score:5, Informative)

      by imsabbel ( 611519 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @04:54PM (#10104702)
      most likely your GPU or the end of the cpu heatpipe is there...
      No current 2.5" HD needs more than 5W during normal usage, which is WAY lower than many other components...

    • Re:Drive Heat (Score:3, Funny)

      by Hooya ( 518216 )
      so, you're a left hander.

      i must have missed the memo to start calling it *gaming* ;)
    • Faster hard drives, as in spinning/heads moving faster? Does that mean more noise as a side-product?

      It irritates me that every single technology advance appears to be used first to increase the "faster, bigger", and make ergonomics acceptible later.

      Why not use such advances to make current hard drives more silent & cool running, and then ramp up the speed?

  • Come on (Score:4, Funny)

    by Legion303 ( 97901 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @04:53PM (#10104692) Homepage
    "Hard". "Lubricant". "Faster". How the hell are the trolls supposed to twist this into a quick laugh? You guys are making it too difficult.

  • Great, but... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PingKing ( 758573 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @04:53PM (#10104693)
    Far greater than faster drives, of course, would be drives with no moving parts.

    No wear, faster transfer (no seek time!) and silent. Should this be the way research should be going?

    • Re:Great, but... (Score:3, Informative)

      by aspx ( 808539 )
      Um, no moving parts does not translate to no wear. Your Pentium IV CPU will eventually let you down, even if you use it under ideal conditions. Granted, well-designed electronic components tend to be more reliable than mechanical components.

      • Re:Great, but... (Score:5, Informative)

        by DarkMan ( 32280 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @08:22PM (#10105670) Journal
        Not meaning to be (overly) pedantic, but that's not wear. Wear is caused by bits rubbing over each other.

        This is not just a semantic difference. The failure modes of silicon chips are mostly diffusion limited - that it, the metal conductors expand, the pn junctions become more diffuse, vacencies develop in the silicon, and so on. The failure mode of a part which wears is generally that the wear causes a mechanical weakness in a part till it breaks, bends, or is otherwise no longer functional.

        This difference is reflected in the time to failure of different devices. Electronics show a bathtub curve - essentially, manufacturing defects show up in young failures, then after a period (around 8 - 10 months), there is no intrinsitic source of failure other than the (slow) diffusion limited modes, so there number of devices failing drop very low, until that mode dominates, at sometime around 8-10 years after manufacture.

        Mechanical parts also show young failures, but, due to wearing, they do not last as long, and the rate of failures does not drop as low. The exact duration is determined by the type of use of the part. For example, this motor here *clunk* has bushes and brushes that have a design life of 1 months constant use, which translates to about 4 years with typical uses patterns. On the other hand, the motor in a washing machine is rated for something like 2 years constant use. The washing machine motor has bigger bushes and brushes, which are designed to last longer.

        I could go on, but a) it gets boring rapidly, and b) I'd have to did out some notes on it, and cba.

        In 10 years with computers, which gives experince with devices up to 20 years old, I have seen 1 case of failure in a componant over 3 months old that was not caused (directly or indirectly [0]) by mechanical wear.

        Having said all that, Flash memory is not as reliable as most electronics, as it has a particular structure that causes insulator breakdown after around 1000 writes. But that's not _really_ wear, although I'm told it has a similar failure profile.

        Not moving parts does not translate to no deterioration, but it _does_ mean no wear.

        [0] Couple of times, power supply fans died, power supply overheats, fails, and frys electronics.

    • Re:Great, but... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by spuzzzzzzz ( 807185 )

      There's plenty of research and progress in this direction: flash drives. They're still ridiculously small and expensive compared to normal hard drives but give them some more years. After all, flash, unlike hard drives, is affected by Moore's law.

    • good idea. then we just have to worry about the finite witeability of Flash memory.

    • Re:Great, but... (Score:3, Informative)

      by MrNemesis ( 587188 )
      Research is already there, RAMdrive products just need volume to become economical.

      Curtis SSD http://www.curtisssd.com/products/drives/ [curtisssd.com] make solid state hard drives that appear as a SCSI hard drive. They're phenomenally fast, and I imagine phenomenally expensive.

      However, they are of course volatile, so you need to stream your OS and data from a tape of HDD into cache before you boot the machine. And again, capacities are limited to ~15GB, so they're only of any real use as swap and/or database filesystems

  • Attention slashdot management (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bigberk ( 547360 ) <bigberk@users.pc9.org> on Sunday August 29, 2004 @04:53PM (#10104698)
    The first twenty posts for this article should prove as valuable for marketing research of slashdot readership. You should be posting pornography, not links to tech articles. Yes, I'm kind of joking but kind of not.

  • Faster Hard Drives are nice... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Duke Machesne ( 453316 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @04:57PM (#10104726)
    But will they make it to market before memory cards [slashdot.org] large enough and cheap enough to feasibly replace hard drives altogether do?

    • Re:Faster Hard Drives are nice... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @05:31PM (#10104898) Homepage Journal
      Why are there slashdotters that believe memory chips will replace hard drives on a large scale any time soon?

      2TB is the addressing limit of that standard, not the amount of memory they will have. 2TB memory cards will take a loooong time to be released, esp. given that 8GB CF cards aren't available, 4GB CF cards are still pretty expensive, if available at all.

      Because flash memory cards follow RAM in costs, I doubt flash drives will replace hard drives any time soon unless you want your hard drive to be as small as your RAM space. Very similar processes are used, and I don't think the cost of making 32MB RAM chips are much different than 32MB solid state chips, because they are very similar in complexity.

      • Re:Faster Hard Drives are nice... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Duke Machesne ( 453316 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @05:38PM (#10104934)
        Yes, right now memory cards are wildly more expensive. But hard drives used to be wildly more expensive than they currently are, too.

        The first round of very fast and very efficient (if also very expensive) flash memory cards large enough to be considered viable hard-drive replacements are coming around now.

        Just as demand for hard-drives has pushed down hard-drive price, and demand for increasing amounts of RAM has pushed down RAM prices, so will increasing demand for solid-state memory hard-drive replacement cards increase.

        I, for one, am optimistic.

        • Yes, right now memory cards are wildly more expensive. But hard drives used to be wildly more expensive than they currently are, too.

          Internal market price changes are meaningless; you have to compare between the markets. Is flash memory decreasing in price at a faster rate than HDs? It doesn't look like it to me. And even if it is, the current per Gig price difference is about 100:1, which means flash has a lot of ground to make up.

        • I am too (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 )
          But let's be realistic about time scales here. CF is not replacing harddrives next month or even next year. We are talking probably 5+ years until it is realisticly at the price level and capacity where it's a serious contender for most systems. In the interm, it would be nice to have better harddrives. It's a proven, widely used technology. Making it better is nothing but good.

          Just because there is potentially something better some years off doesn't mean you want to stop working on what you've got now. Qu

    • Re:Faster Hard Drives are nice... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by VeryProfessional ( 805174 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @06:45PM (#10105276)

      But will they make it to market before memory cards [slashdot.org] large enough and cheap enough to feasibly replace hard drives altogether do?

      Why the assumption that we have one or the other? The history of computing is one of a lengthening memory pyramid. It used to be just RAM and nonvolatile storage. Now we have three levels of cache on top of that. Now (excepting certain bits of bloatware *cough cough*) operating systems are not growing in size at the same rate as storage technology. I still have trouble filling more than a gigabyte or two on a basic Linux install. Why not have a situation where OS and core applications are stored on solid-state memory chips (say 10 G), while all the media that people are so fond of can end up on your mega hard-drive? That way you get the benefit of both: snappy load times for executable code, and near-unlimited, low-cost storage for all your media.

  • Faster and longer lasting hard drives? (Score:3, Funny)

    by thephotoman ( 791574 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @04:57PM (#10104730) Journal
    How long do you think it'll be before I start getting "natural Viagra" spam for this technology? And how much longer will it take for the spammers to realize that they're talking about an actual computer component and not anything phallic?

  • What's changed? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gerardrj ( 207690 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @04:58PM (#10104732) Journal
    Granted, I've not kept up on the intricate details of hard disk manufacture, but I recall that the drive heads were suspended above the physical media by a thin layer of air. Has that changed? What's the point of lubricating the disk surfaces if the heads don't touch them.

    • Re:What's changed? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Tlosk ( 761023 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @05:10PM (#10104789)
      Ignore the other people who replied, I don't think they bothered to read the article. The lubricant on the disc surface is just to help protect it from damage (platters are already have a protective layer, but this new one has better characteristics at high speed and is simpler to apply because it doesn't require seperate adhesives).

      The term lubricant probably wasn't the best choice, rather it's just a protective film.

      Supposedly at the high RPMs of top of the line drives, the film currently used can ripple or even spin off entirely after prolonged usage which leaves the disc more vulnerable to head contact or armature resting.

  • But it's still mechanical. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dark Lord Seth ( 584963 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @04:58PM (#10104735) Journal

    While it's all very nice, the problem is easily ignored if one would just go for solid state HDs. Why is it so damn hard to come up with a simple system? I don't care if it's 5 1/4 device with 20gb at 200 euros. Think of the MASSIVE speed and reliability increases...

    • The only MASSIVE increase would be in access time, but dunno about bandwith (SD, CF and friends aren't that fast - maybe with some kind of internal redundant arrangement, a la RAID, if it's not already used) or reliability (they have a limited number of write cycles - the swap file on a machine low on RAM or on a file server would probably burn a hole through it...).
    • Actually I have been thinking about solid state drives for quite some time now. Here's what I came up with the last iteration :

      You are pretty much just as well off with a nice tight SATA RAID 5 array. Tom's ran a recent article on throughput for SATA RAID 5 arrays and found that at 6 drives (using those bad ass high end Raptors, I'm guessing) he could break through the 200 megabytes per second sustained transfer rates. About 4-5 times what you and I get on a daily basis from our regular ATA-100 hard dri

  • Stop making joke (Score:4, Funny)

    by Hao Wu ( 652581 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @05:01PM (#10104749) Homepage
    This is not funny. We have very serious technology break-through, and you should not be laugh about "Hard drive", "lube-and-polyester, "etc."

  • Bearings (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stimpleton ( 732392 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @05:06PM (#10104770)
    The oddest materials pop up for load bearing duties.
    "Felt bearings" have been used in the automotive industry for years.

    Especially in rack and pinion steering system where lateral forces are not so high.

    Lubricants for the felt material include oil and graphite powder, or run dry.

    While more durable bearings such as needle roller, bronze sleeve, and teflon bushings, may be the preference of performance applications, ease of fitment, damping ability, and cost, still ensures felt bearings are used today, both in automotive and other industrial machinery. It is very possible, you have owned a car with one or moore felt bearings somewhere in the steering system.

    The properties of synthetic material as a bearing surface have been used and far back as 1950's(and maybe beyond).

  • sterically hindered polymer (Score:5, Informative)

    by bodrell ( 665409 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @05:06PM (#10104771) Journal
    For those who failed chemistry . . .
    The polymer used in this application is a sterically hindered polyester. An ester is a carboxylic acid with some sort of organic group replacing the hydrogen (i.e., O=C-O-CH3 is the methyl ester moiety).

    Bulky groups sterically hinder a molecule, making part of the molecule inaccessible. One very common application is the sterically hindered base, like triethylamine. A normal amine is NH3, but a triethyl amine is N(CH3)3. The effect is that the compound raises a solution's pH, but cannot react with other functional groups easily. This helps prevent side reactions / biproducts.

    t-BOC is one type of a sterically hindered protective group. Generally, protecting groups are removed as one of the final steps in order to get the desired product. This polyester has steric hindrance that protects the ester bond. But the article didn't say how that was accomplished. Adamantanes are another type of bulky group used to sterically hinder a molecule.

    • Well, I bet there are a lot of people who've never failed chemistry who didn't know what a sterically hindered polyester is.
      I'm also sure that there are a ton of smart chemistry students who, thanks to your pedantic "explanation" are no wiser.

      I hope that you don't plan to teach chemistry to anyone who doesn't already know it.
      Not everyone has studied organic chemistry.

    • Uh, that sort of chemistry falls under organic chemistry. Organic chemistry was the third class to take in the chemistry track at the schools I went to, but non chem-majors only needed to take the first two.

    • Re:sterically hindered polymer (Score:5, Informative)

      by bodrell ( 665409 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @05:53PM (#10104997) Journal
      Well, I bet there are a lot of people who've never failed chemistry who didn't know what a sterically hindered polyester is. I'm also sure that there are a ton of smart chemistry students who, thanks to your pedantic "explanation" are no wiser.

      I hope that you don't plan to teach chemistry to anyone who doesn't already know it. Not everyone has studied organic chemistry.

      (I didn't write the above comment; just trying to keep the thread from getting too deep)
      Sorry, but anyone who studied (and passed) chemistry ought to know what steric hindrance is. If you're having trouble with my vocabulary, then I'll try to clarify.


      Steric: having to do with space. As in, "I was unable to fit my couch in the Honda Civic due to steric hindrance."
      Polymer: A molecule composed of three or more repeating units. This can be a heteropolymer (more than one type of repeating unit) or a homopolymer (only one type of repeating unit). The repeating unit is called a monomer, and often has an antiquated name. For example, ethylene is the antiquated name of ethene, a two-carbon hydrocarbon with a double bond between carbons. However, polyethylene has no double bonds (because the bonds opened during the polymerization).
      Moiety: A part of a molecule that has a particular functionality. For example, the amino acids each have three moieties: the amino part, the acid part, and the side-group. For proline the amino part is the side group also. Functional groups (amines, esters, acids, alcohols, etc.) are all moieties.

      Are we clear now? Or is that still too pedantic? BTW, I'm not a teacher and don't plan on being one in the near future. There are different levels of understanding of any subject. Just because some people don't know what a molecule is doesn't mean I should define every term when I mention them. To quote H. L. Mencken, "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach."

  • Fucking hell...the Slashdot editors have no respect for those with dirty minds. NONE!

  • Buy our "Boogie Grease!" (Score:4, Funny)

    by JoeCommodore ( 567479 ) <larry@portcommodore.com> on Sunday August 29, 2004 @05:06PM (#10104774) Homepage
    Yeah, baby! That's what I said, Boogie Grease!

    Boogie-Grease - made with bitchin' bad-ass polyester technology. Our Boogie-Grease will make your hard drive run longer and faster.

    So don't come up "short and slow" in the server department and be the laughing stock of the tech lab. Buy Boogie-Grease Today!

    P.S. Nerd chicks dig it!

  • Its funny. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) * on Sunday August 29, 2004 @05:10PM (#10104792)
    That I am reading this right after I reinstalled a new harrdrive on my Notebook where after 2 1/2 years the IBM Travelstar died on me. So in in an other 2 1/2 years these drives will be available for my next replacement. Still I wish I had the option to at least raid 1 my laptop. Even it it does add weight and uses more battery.

  • Faster, but maybe smellier? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by postgrep ( 803732 ) <djandercore@noSpaM.gmail.com> on Sunday August 29, 2004 @05:11PM (#10104800) Homepage Journal
    Won't the heat of the hardrive heat the lube up? And if so, won't it smell bad?

  • Polyester, eh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @05:20PM (#10104838)
    Hmm. I've been using polyester based oils [drivetrain.com]in my engines for a long time. So am I going to have to change my HDD oil every 3000 gigabytes or something?

    • You're measuring in gigabytes, and not rotations or miles?

      What's next? You're gonna start telling me that your hard drive can do the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs?

  • the 70's (Score:3, Funny)

    by mottie ( 807927 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @05:23PM (#10104858)
    A recent discovery in polyester (yes, polyester, you disco baby) lubricants
    THAT explains why people got so busy back in the 70s.

  • vehicle oil? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by chimpo13 ( 471212 ) <slashdot@nokilli.com> on Sunday August 29, 2004 @05:37PM (#10104926) Homepage Journal
    Could this be used on engines? I know that oil carries away heat, as well as lubricates, in internal combustion engines.

    If they find a way of coating parts and use some kind of anti-freeze in vehicles, maybe internal combustion engines will last longer. Two strokes could make a come back.

  • Vapor pressure of HD lubricants -- lifespan? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @05:38PM (#10104936)
    I've often wondered about the rate of evaporation on fluid-bearing HDs. Running at high temperatures, even the lowest level of evaporation will mean a loss of lubricant over the years. Even inside the semi-sealed chamber of the drive, each on-off cycle will mean that the drive exhales the evaporated lubricant and the cooling pattern of a turned-off drive will mean condensation of lubricant on the inside shell of the case.

    Ball-bearings (well-designed ones at least) can last virtually forever. I wonder if the same can be said for fluid bearings?

  • Operating Temps (Score:3, Interesting)

    by EmperorKagato ( 689705 ) * <sakamura@gmail.com> on Sunday August 29, 2004 @05:56PM (#10105011) Homepage Journal
    It makes me wonder what are the possible operating temperatures of this lubricant and how much of a viscosity difference we would see from the standards of today compared to this new lubricant that is added.

  • Longer lasting? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by myov ( 177946 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @06:23PM (#10105168)
    With my hard drive luck, a year seems like a "longer lasting" drive. I've lost more hard drives in the last year than ever - Just being away on vacation (with the computers unplugged), I lost 2 hard drives! (not a complete loss, but the systems acted funny enough that I suspected total failure if I didn't replace the drives quickly)

    One week of being off, for a drive that is not used 24x7, should not kill a drive. I've had drives sitting on a shelf for a year that still work fine. I should not need to setup a 3-drive RAID array simply to get the level of reliability we had a few years ago.

  • Improvements through the mundane (Score:5, Interesting)

    by michael_cain ( 66650 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @06:25PM (#10105181) Journal
    It is surprising how often improvements in our computer technology comes from relatively mundane sources. For example, much of the reason that Moore's Law has continued to hold is the way that the mechanical engineers have been able to constantly improve our ability to position things accurately. Masks and wafers must be positioned with astonishing (at least to me) accuracy relative to each other in order to allow creation of 90 nm features.

  • Get your H/\rd d|sk lubr|c4nt for ch3ep ch3ep!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by sl4shd0rk ( 755837 ) on Sunday August 29, 2004 @08:06PM (#10105619)
    your womans will love your fore it! H/\rd d|sk lubr|c4nt only 4.95 come on man you ow it to her! Spin faster last longer! many satisfied people can be happy!
  • Check out these solid state HD's [bitmicro.com].

    I'm sure there'll come the time when spinning disks (either floppy or HD) will come to an end and become just pieces of junk in a museum - like vacuum tubes in electronics.

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