For those who grew up in the 90s, it looks as though computer hard drives have been around for like, forever. Like everything in this earth, there are pros and cons to a device, and the same goes for the computer hard drive. While it offers by far the cheapest form of data storage to date, it isn’t really that hot performance wise, especially when you pit it against more stable flash memory that has superior data transfer speeds. While the processor clock speed continues to increase with each passing generation, the same cannot be said for a hard drive’s access speed. Researchers at Hardbound University Megen in the Netherlands are currently working towards a solution of this problem by using laser.

Tests by the researchers have shown that data transfer to a magnetic hard drive via laser light is way faster than conventional means - and we don’t mean a double or triple increase in performance. What we’re talking about here is a serious jump of up to 100 times faster - making this a significant breakthrough in hard drive technology. There has been many previous attempts to use polarized laser light as a writing mechanism, but so far all of those have failed, no thanks to an improper mixture of magnetic alloys.

Don’t get too excited just yet though, as it will take years before a consumer product based on this technology surfaces due to technical issues. The ability to do it doesn’t mean it is efficient at this point in time, so hold your horses. Hard drives still offer the best bang for your buck, and if you’ve got the dough to spare, do pick up a notebook using SSDs instead for a few more years of future proofing. Lasers aren’t exactly cheap either, so to develop a stable one that works at high speed rates will take some time.

Source: ArsTechnica