Hitachi Goes Perpendicular

Nimrangul writes "Hitachi has recently announced perpendicular recording with their harddrives, allowing for 10 times the data storage on a disk, meaning 20 G microdrives are on their way as soon as 2007. Hitachi is so pleased with this technological development that it has broken into song." This is, without a doubt, the most surreal thing I've seen today. Flash Required.

If you can get high before you watch this

[SweetAndSourJesus (555410)]

I strongly recommend it.

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[HDlife (714246)]

...The creators certainly did!

mmmm, mmmm, Get perpendicular, mmmm, mmmm
(I just can't stop)

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[ZeroZen (136166)]

Need a mod option AWESOME

Re:If you can get high before you watch this

[taviso (566920)]

$ sudo emerge media-gfx/swftools
# non gentoo users: http://www.quiss.org/swftools/
$ wget http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/research/images/pr%2 0images/Get_Perpendicular.swf
$ swfextract --mp3 Get_Perpendicular.swf
$ xmms output.mp3

For Your Referencing Pleasure

[MrNonchalant (767683)]

For the clueless among us, it looks like they're trying (and sorta failing) to emulate Schoolhouse Rock [wikipedia.org].

Re:For Your Referencing Pleasure

[generalleoff (760847)]

Yea they did. But I think they did it just lame enough to be funny as hell :)

Re:For Your Referencing Pleasure

[Seumas (6865)]

I'd hardly say that's failing. That was really well done. I loaded it up, expecting it to be stupid and hating it. Not only did I learn something (recalling the huge uninformed slashdot debate earlier in the week when the story first broke), but it was very amusing. Just enough tongue-in-cheek not to be condescending, but silly enough to be followed by total gits.

I'm not quite old enough for the Schoolhouse Rock stuff, but I've seen a few snips here and there (I'm not quite yet 30).

Re:For Your Referencing Pleasure

[C0rinthian (770164)]

I still havn't forgotten "Conjunction Junction"

Only one thing occurs to me right now...

[AaronBrethorst (860210)]

"There's a lot of flag-burners who have got too much freedom. I wanna make it legal for policemen to beat 'em, cuz there's limits to our liberties... At least I hope and pray that there, cuz those liberal freaks go too far..."

Yeah, that was pretty surreal, not Mini-Me-being-spanked-by-a-6-foot-tall-woman-on-VH 1 surreal, but more than enough for a drunken Friday night.

In the post-9/11 world, ...

[chris_eineke (634570)]

In the post-9/11 world, all hard-drives are terroristicular. ;)

In sovi..

[Tibe (444675)]

In sovi.. Ah screw it, in Soviet Russia they don't make weird crap like that.

Get Perpendicular

[inKubus (199753)]

In Post 9/11 America, the bits have to stand up straight or terror will win.

Re:In sovi..

[kasparov (105041)]

Have you seen Russian cartoons [wellesley.edu]? Trust me, they make weird crap like that.

School House Rock

[SumDog (466607)]

Before you skip over this as a dupe, you need to check out the flash animation.

Damn this thing screams a nerd verion of school house rock!

Re:School House Rock

[Seumas (6865)]

All technical information should be conveyed this way! Seriously, can you imagine how well this would work to teach difficult concepts to people who are otherwise not entirely technical? Or, for that matter, for some of us industry insiders, too. No more thumbing through convoluted RFCs. Just load me up a flash animation with a funky beat!

*snicker*

I need my bits perpendicular so I can store more naked horizontals.

technical manga

[RotJ (771744)]

In Japan, a lot of product manuals, corporate PR documents, and government documents are published in manga form. Morita Akio, co-founder of Sony onced asked his young female skiing instructor if she had read his autobiography Made in Japan. She told him "no, but I would have read it if it was a manga." So he had an artist adapt his book into manga form, naturally.

The informational manga genre was mostly spurred by the publication of A Manga Introduction to the Japanese Economy [dnp.co.jp] and A Manga History of Japan (Manga Nihon-no-Rekishi in the 1980s.

Re:School House Rock

[alset_tech (683716)]

All technical information should be conveyed this way! Seriously, can you imagine how well this would work to teach difficult concepts to people who are otherwise not entirely technical?

That's a great idea! I've been working on a cartoon paperclip to assist people when they write documents. He helps you format your docs through song. Imagine "Looks like you're writing a letter," sung to the tune of Perpendicular, only out of key and really loud. I'm thinking of calling him Clip-... whoops.

Meow Mix the Sequel

[robotsrule (805458)]

This song will probaly stick in my head for weeks just like the "meow, meow, meow, meow" Meow Mix commercial jingle did. I am going to sacrifice a small hard drive as an act of contrition.

Re:Meow Mix the Sequel

[mangus_angus (873781)]

may you forever burn in some sort of hot microsoft infested pit....I haven't seen that in years and now it's back in my head louder than ever....I bow to your evil.

Marketing works

[nysus (162232)]

Hitachi (ah, see, I remembered the brand) has succeeded in getting everyone to believe that they are on the cutting edge of hard drive technology. While that may or may not be true, the key point is that perception is being largely disseminated by a cartoon and not hard data or facts. Interesting.

Re:Marketing works

[Maxiosu (748985)]

think about it - viral marketing at work.

we're all going to post this on our blogs/webpages and spam it out in forums/irc to laugh at hitachi... thus promoting their new technology

I, for one, welcome out new smarter than the average slashdotter overlords

Yep. Today slashdot, fark, etc, tomorrow...

[WoTG (610710)]

the other major news sites online and offline will all be talking about Hitachi's great technology to store 30 000 mp3's on the next ipod mini. A few bucks of marketing VERY well spent.

Double points for doing this with something so technical that most /.'s, never mind the general public, wouldn't be able to understand from a generic press release.

Re:Marketing works

[Detritus (11846)]

Considering that Hitachi acquired IBM's hard disk drive operation, which is responsible for most of the advances in drive technology over the past 50 years, I think it's fair to consider them leaders in drive technology.

Re:Marketing works

[Patik (584959)]

Yeah, but who outside of Slashdot readers knows that?

The point is that the cartoon can get the point across to a different type of audience, particularly the ones who want bigger and better MP3 players.

Re:Marketing works

[elgatozorbas (783538)]

Hitachi (ah, see, I remembered the brand) has succeeded in getting everyone to believe that they are on the cutting edge of hard drive technology. While that may or may not be true

How, 'may or may not be true'. You saw the bits, didn't you?!? Clearly this is true!

Patents

[The Amazing Fish Boy (863897)]

I wonder if they can patent "a method of using disco music to make bits 'get perpendicular.'" Maybe if they crimp the disk, afterwards.

Jesus Christ

[brsmith4 (567390)]

That's my new sig.

Re:Jesus Christ

[balster neb (645686)]

I had the same idea, except that I've made mine a hyperlink.

I wonder how long it'll be before someone signs up in /. as Actuator Man.

Actuuuaaatorrr Maaaan!!!

Re:Jesus Christ

[Actuator Man (874693)]

About 54 minutes.

the perpendicular lifestyle...

[by Anonymous Coward]

I'm dancing! I'm dancing!

This was insanely clever. Will be a cult video within days... You have to admit it does educate...

The young kids

[jimbolaya (526861)]

It's already the rage with the young kids. My 17 months son watched the whole thing through, and clapped along with the applause at the end (so cute! He's going to be geek, just like daddy!). If that's not proof positive that Hitachi is on to something, I don't know what is.

Interesting...

[ErikZ (55491)]

So, how much faster can they spin the drives now with this improvement?

The 15k drives use smaller platters so they can withstand the stress of the high RPMs.

So what if you make them even smaller. The 36.6GB HD can potentially go up to 366GB now, but I think people would be very interested in a drive with smaller platters that goes 30,000rpm and is still 36.6GB.

Re:Interesting...

[mrchaotica (681592)]

If the psychotic flash video is accurate, the bits are closer together. Wouldn't that mean the data could be read at a faster rate without increasing the rotational speed of the disk?

Re:Interesting...

[Seumas (6865)]

So, how much faster can they spin the drives now with this improvement?

Slower, actually. If you spin too fast (or bump the drive), the bits will fall over. And not just a few bits. You've seen dominoes, right?

(Yes, I'm being sarcastic. Knowing slashdot as I do, this has to be clarified).

Re:Interesting...

[WalksOnDirt (704461)]

"...platter goes supersonic."

Fifteen thousand RPM on a 3.5" drive looks like 156 miles per hour to me, unless I've miscalculated. Hardly supersonic.

Superwha?

[Doc Ruby (173196)]

Am I glad IBM sold their "moribund" HD biz to Hitachi. Even when funk and disco were king & queen of the dancefloor, IBM never had the balls to rip off "I'm Just a Bill" to enlighten us on superparamagnetism.

Well I'll be!

[by Anonymous Coward]

Fuck Strongbad. *This* is what Flash was made for.

Perpendicular!

[kuzb (724081)]

How much do you want to bet the price of these drives will get perpendicular too?

Re:Perpendicular!

[timeOday (582209)]

I mean just think if you could buy one drive that has 50gb of space from Maxtor, or you could pay something like 10% to 15% more and get a 500gb from Hitachi.

IMHO this never happens. Economics combined with patents almost guarantees there are never sudden leaps in price/performance. Even if the new tech is much cheaper to make, why price it below what is necessary to beat the competition?

Is the cartoon accurate?

[boingyzain (739759)]

The cartoon was cute and all, but what I'm wondering is if its really accurate or not. Are bits really these square pieces on a platter? I always had the impression that they were magnetic grooves in the platter (thus why you dont put a magnet near it). I don't see how you could make grooves perpendicular, so I guess I'm wrong. I did RTFA, but it would be great to see a better explanation of it!

ObSimpsons

[dangitman (862676)]

bit: But why can't we just make a law against horizontal bits?

Hitachi: Because that law would be against the laws of physics. But if we changed the laws of physics...

bit: Then we could make all sorts of crazy hard-drives!

Hitachi: Now you're catching on!

bit: What if people say you're not good enough to be in the laws of physics?

Hitachi: Then I'll crush all opposition to me, and I'll make Isaac Newton pay. If he fights back, I'll say that he's gay.

Re:Oh God!

[slavemowgli (585321)]

You obviously don't check Newgrounds often. :)

Re:Oh God!

[metlin (258108)]

Are you *kidding* me?

That was cool, catchy, geeky, original and quite imaginative, all at the same time.

I for one think it was really, really well done.

Get perpendicular...tra la la!

Re:Oh God!

[hdparm (575302)]

Try this [albinoblacksheep.com], then.

Re:Oh God!

[G-funk (22712)]

I love that fat guy, he rocks :)

In a horrible, car-wreck-eqsque "glad it's not me" kinda way... Like the starwars kid.

Re:Isnt this....

[RyuuzakiTetsuya (195424)]

No.

it lacked the fucking song and dance number.

HOLY FUCK WAS THAT CATCHY.

Re:Good Grief...

[thesatch (844290)]

a working link: http://www.archive.org/download/dontcopythatfloppy /dontcopythatfloppy.wmv [archive.org]

...with some changes...

[lxt (724570)]

...yeah - "Oh My God! You Killed Kenny" becomes "Oh My God! You Killed Another Feature!"

Re:people dont want big storage anymore

[KingSkippus (799657)]

Just my anecdotal experience is that hard drives are bigger and more reliable these days than they were back in the days of those old clunkers. Especially when you take into consider the higher demands we're placing on them.

Re:Bigger is better... maybe

[David Horn (772985)]

Hard drives aren't big enough for me. You ever tried working with more than an hour or so of uncompressed DV footage? Runs at nearly 1GB/minute, and if you have to edit it, you need yet another drive to dump the finished product on to if it's not going back to the camera. Modern drives are fast enough for what I want to do with them - roll on 1TB and above!