Had HDDs remained as bulky as they were a couple of decades ago, or their storage capacities stayed stuck in the sub-gigabyte region, the iPods, even with their cool and sleek design and regardless of Steve Jobs’ uber-marketing touch, would not be the bestsellers that they are today. Nokia’s N-series of multimedia mobile phones would have remained a rather tantalizing mobile electronics fantasy. And laptop computers would have remained only slightly less hulking than their desktop-bound cousins.

Fortunately, various mileposts in data storage technology were reached during the last decade. Advances in materials, recording, and manufacturing technologies contributed to the coming of today’s HDDs—small but gluttonous. That is, insatiable when it comes to gulping and storing huge amounts of data, but as sparing as a monk on Good Friday when it comes to consuming power.  

Fujitsu’s Nanohole Pattern

Fujitsu, in partnership with Yamagata Fujitsu Ltd., Fujitsu Laboratories, Ltd., and the Kanagawa Academy of Science and Technology, has developed a nanohole pattern with a 25-nm pitch. This breakthrough in magnetic recording is expected to enable future HDDs to store data at an areal density of one terabit (1 trillion bits) per square inch. (For comparison, a 1GB HDD can store up to 1 billion bits.)

Combined with other data storage technologies, such as perpendicular magnetic recording, Fujitsu’s patterned media recording technology will help meet growing demand for small HDDs with high data capacities.

Scientists Use Photon to Store Data

Scientists at the University of Rochester have developed a method for encoding an image into a photon. The technique also enabled the researchers to slow down the image and retrieve the image data.

The technology stores data as light, although it may seem similar with that used in computers, which stores data as bits and bytes. Moreover, this technology can come handy as scientists and engineers are developing optics-based technologies and methods to speed up computer processing and connection speeds among networks.

Storm Helps Scatter Viruses

For us who live on these intimate-with-calamities shores, reports about predators and profiteers who come in the wake of every catastrophe—both natural and manmade—are quite common. Although, we still find these vultures repugnant, we somehow have grown accustomed to their macabre operations. We just try and avoid them as much as we can.

But some of their cousins in Europe might be a little bit harder to avoid. Last week, while storms were raging across the old continent, some computer virus authors concocted malware that can hijack computer systems. These lowlifes and scourge of the IT world then sent their deadly concoctions to hundreds of thousands of e-mail addresses worldwide.

The malware, or Trojan, which will hardly be noticed by users and likely to be opened only by the carelessly curious, can then be used to steal data or take over the computer to post spam. So if you have noticed a surge in spam traffic into your inboxes, do not blame the storms raging in Europe.

Don’t open that e-mail attachment unless you are 102 percent certain it comes from people you trust. That’s all for the meantime, folks. Join me again next time as we keep on watching IT.