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PIXIE DUST
By taking a three-atom-thick layer of the element Ruthenium, a metal similar
to Platinum, and sandwiching it between to magnetic layers. The IBM Scientists
refers to the 3 atom layer of Ruthenium as "Pixie Dust" but officially known as
"antiferromagnetically-coupled (AFC) media". Below you can see a picture of a
traditional magnetic media and AFC or Pixie Dusted media version. See the small
purple specks between the yellow and blue blocks? That is the 3 atom layer of
Ruthenium that has been added. That doesn't seem to be a big deal now does it?
So what makes this 3-atom region so special?
IBM scientist came to realize that when magnetic regions on the disk become
too small, they cannot retain their magnetic orientations -- the data -- over
the typical lifetime of the product. This is called the "superparamagnetic
effect.
AFC AKA Pixie Dust media solves this problem. The ultra-thin ruthenium layer
forces the adjacent layers to orient themselves magnetically in opposite
directions. The opposing magnetic orientations make the entire multilayer
structure appear much thinner than it actually is. Thus small, high-density bits
can be written easily on AFC media, but they will retain their magnetization due
to the media's overall thickness. So what we end up with is one very happy hard
drive and one very happy consumer.
- IBM's Travelstar laptop hard disk drive is the industry's first with a
new magnetic data storage media called antiferromagnetically-coupled (AFC)
media. AFC media increased current areal density limits by four-fold, to
surpass 100 gigabits/inch 2 , a level once thought impossible. Continued
growth of data density is crucial to feed the information-hungry Internet
economy and help hasten the transition in home entertainment from passive
analog technologies to interactive digital formats.
- AFC media breaks areal density records by employing multiple magnetic
layers that act in opposite directions, but "magically" stick together
through a thin layer of metal. The result: Thick, thermally stable media
that appear thin and are easy to write on.
Adaptive Battery Life Extender
Let's talk about some of the things that make this drive a
major improvement that other drives sold by other companies. Hitachi has
adapted for their Travelstar series drives a new technology called 'Adaptive
Battery Life Extender'. Since one of the biggest complaints
heard from mobile computer users is battery life it only makes sense that
any means to improve the battery drain would be an improvement.
The Adaptive Battery Life Extender
has four stages it can use to save your laptops battery consumption.
-
Performance Idle
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Active Idle
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Low Power Idle
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Adaptive Standby
When the disk drive is idle, this unique power-management
technology dynamically selects the appropriate mode to minimize power usage
and help preserve battery life. The mode selection is based on the current
disk drive access patterns, so disk response times also can improve
significantly. All current 2.5-inch Travelstar drives and microdrives are
implemented with this latest Enhanced Adaptive Battery Life Extender.
Hard disk drive load/unload technology
In the past when ever a hard drive was started or stopped
the the head of the drive was indexed to a very small textured position on
the drive where it stayed until the drive reached a certain operating speed.
Due to the higher speed of today's drives this means of head parking just
doesn't work anymore. So Hitachi employed the same load/unload mechanisms
that was used for large form factor disk drives, including the 3390 disk
drive product.
In drives that use load/unload technology, a lifting
mechanism removes each head from the disk surface prior to power-down and
returns the heads to the disk surface only after a sufficient rotation rate
has been reached on the next start-up. As a result, head-to-disk contact
(and any other head-to-disk interaction) is significantly reduced, and disk
damage from such contact is virtually eliminated.
Partial Response Maximum
Likelihood (PRML)
A PRML channel takes samples of the waveforms that represent
data as they flow from the disk and uses this information to construct the
data stream, rather than using the waveforms themselves.
Advantages
PRML channels, working with MR head and No-ID technologies, allow
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Faster data transfer rates.
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Fewer soft errors per MB stored.
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Filtering of the signal from the disk resulting in a
'clean' signal.
It all boils down to greater reliability for your data.
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