Did they say it would come with Duke Nukem Forever pre-loaded?

If there is one area of components that definitely needs to get it's act together, it's storage. 15 years to increase write speed only is pathetic.

I mean, seriously... If the HDD is the slowest and most unreliable component in a modern computer, and we can't improve on it, why is it still in computers? Why aren't we developing and using alternatives already?

Won't SSD's pretty much reign supreme in 15 years?

nevermind the fact that it doesn't increase read speeds. What is the point then? 12-15 years is not worth the wait.

Saying that a new tech is 15 years out sounds like a euphemism for "there are some potentially insurmountable technical challenges" to me. It's kind of like practical nuclear fusion: for pretty much my entire life -- and I'm probably older than like 95% of the people who read/post here -- commercial nuclear fusion has been "about a decade away". I'm starting to believe it'll still be a decade away 100 years from now.

I seriously hope that 15 years from now we will have stopped relying on spinning platters for most of our storage. If that happens, HAMR will be obsolete before it is commercially viable.

But the bottom line is, spinning disks are -- and will continue to be for some time yet -- the most cost-effective way of providing huge amounts of storage with high bandwidth. In a way, we've been screwed over by how good hard drive tech has gotten -- the cost per bit is so low now, that nothing else is able to get a decent foothold in the market.

I could have guessed about "the speed gains after 15 years" without reading this news.. ;)

IT'S HAMR TIME!

15 years eh, you gotta be kidding me.
But didn't they promise optical holographic discs in 2 to 3 years 5 years ago? won't that be finished sooner and make that stuff obsolete? i hope so, 15 years is a bit too long, and clearly indicates there are issues they cannot deal with, and are hoping time will heal all.

15 years = the terrorists have won.

There are a couple of catches, though. First, read operations in HAMR hard drives would still be done magnetically, so they wouldn't benefit from the same speed gains.

I'm no hard drive scientist, but I suspect that reads are already capable of being several times faster than writes, since they only need to sense the information that's already there. It would be the speed of the writes that's holding up that particular operation.

If they were able to increase density and thereby linear throughput, I think the reads would already be able to keep up. It would be the writes that would be holding things back.

Paper-wise, the technology for over half of new hard disk stuff is probably complete already.
The only reason I can see for waiting 10-15 years for something they already know how to build, is probably paperwork, legal stuff, marketing, and timing.
Hard drive makers are probably trying to milk every last dollar from old tech, and won't release anything new unless their competition steps up first.

13-15 years from now I don't believe "hard drives" as we currently think of them will still exist.

I am still waiting for MEMS-based storage. Research began in the late 1990's and we have yet to see a commercially viable product.

MEMS-based storage promises higher density, higher bandwidth and lower latency. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Millipede .

Here's some hammer Technology already in use:
http://www.bbspot.com/Images/News_Features/2004/05/whining_hammer.jpg
http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/1107788/2/istock...

Can't wait for the TR review in 13 years!