Gadgetory

what's in the works for the future of computer data storage I mean we've gone from two gigabytes to two terabytes being a typical amount of PC storage in less than 20 years a thousandfold increase so are things just going to keep becoming exponentially more capacitors why don't we start answering this question with a look at our old friends the mechanical hard drive already there are a number of technologies in the works that will make hard drives more spacious while still allowing them to fit in that familiar three and a half inch enclosure hard drive makers like Seagate and Western Digital are working on technologies such as shingled magnetic recording which overlaps data tracks to essentially make them narrower bit patterned media which can encode one bit of data to just one magnetic grain instead of a group and heat assisted magnetic recording or hammer which heats up small areas of the hard disk allowing the magnetic grains themselves that store the data to be a lot smaller and you can learn more about hammer in this video here these technologies are expected to help push hard drive capacities to 50 terabytes by the year 2020 Wow but aside from changing how magnetic platter data recording works manufacturers are also looking at using more exotic materials hard drives filled with helium instead of good old-fashioned air are already on the market since helium is less dense than air there's less fluid resistance when the drive platters spin meaning more precise positioning of the read/write head with lower power consumption and all of this without making your mp3 sound like the singer just sucked air from a balloon of course by this point you may have moved off of hard drives in favor of SSDs in which case you might be more interested in Intel and microns 3d crosspoint which features very dense arrangements of memory cells that don't require transistors leading to higher capacities 3d crosspoint will also have Layton sees up to a thousand times lower than traditional meant and will last for much longer than a conventional SSD meaning we could see drives much bigger and faster than what we have today and Samsung is also working on a competing technology called zine end though they're being quite tight-lipped about how it works but we're not just restricted to making traditional hard drives larger or making smaller and smaller transistors for our SSDs there's holographic data storage that takes the concept of a dual layer optical disk to a completely new dimension instead of just storing data in a two-dimensional pattern of what are effectively pits in the surface holographic discs can store data in three-dimensional patterns using nearly the entire thickness of the disk in fact multi terabyte single disks may be available at some point though progress on actually getting holographic storage to market has been agonizingly slow and unfortunately the Jedi Council only existed very far away and very long ago so they're not really around to show us how holocrons work but although none of us actually have midi-chlorians in our blood the farther flung future of data storage might be inside our own bodies I'm talking about DNA the chemical that stores your entire genetic code down to that weird mole on your butt so if you think back to high school biology you might remember that each base pair of your DNA is either a t or GC meaning that DNA could be used as a digital storage medium with each base pair corresponding to a one or a zero biologists have been synthesizing DNA in the lab for quite a few years for tons of different applications so perhaps it shouldn't be that surprising that scientists are looking at it as a way to store data other than your genome a single cubic millimeter of DNA can hold over six hundred and eighty-five terabytes of data so just think of how many games videos and dank means a DNA drive could hold one day even if it were only the size of a modern SD card DNA is also very stable and could hold data for millions of years making it potentially a great choice for archival storage down the line but hold on a minute Linus how do you retrieve information from a puddle well although scientists work with DNA in liquid form don't scoff at the concept of liquid state storage researchers have recently used clusters of nanoparticles only about 5 microns wide about the same size as your typical bacterium suspended in a fluid to hold huge amounts of data I'm talking 1 terabyte in only a tablespoon this works by using small temperature changes to rearrange these nanoparticles to different states and since each cluster of these particles can have millions of different states not just the binary 0 & 1 we're all used to liquid state storage could reach capacities that just aren't possible with present-day tech no word though on when liquid drives might hit the market or if you'll have to buy them in a bag like those weirdos from Eastern Canada already seem to do with milk are you tired of hearing me try to sell you other people's stuff you're in luck kids because today I'm going to tell you about the exclusive Linus tech tips merch we have on sale right now our store over at T Spring calm has a wide selection of t-shirts including tech quickie shirts if you're a big fan of this channel and our new hash tag out of ideas shirt if you haven't gotten tired of saying it in the comments you can even get a tote bag a sticker or a coffee mug if you want to start your day with a nice hot cup of Linus who wrote this cheese and on crowd made you can pick up your all new posters we have one for each of our channels perfect for your living room dorm room or your mother's room they come in two different sizes that are printed on high quality poster stock so if you'd like to support us directly by pick up some awesome swag check out our stores at teespring and crowd made in the video description so thanks for watching guys like dislike check out our other channels leave a comment with a suggestion for a future video and don't forget to subscribe subscribe subscribe don't forget to subscribe