Replacing magnets with lasers could make hard drives 100 time faster, according to scientists.
In an effort to squeeze more performance from hard drives, scientists have been experimenting with replacing traditional magnetic heads with laser beams.
Using a technique called heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), the boffins have been able to write data to a hard drive using polarised laser light.
Rather than a magnet changing the polarity of a bit on the surface of the hard disk, heat generated by the laser is used to do the job. By focusing the beam on a very small area, it causes the polarity of the bit to change, thereby storing either a zero or a one.
The researchers, based at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, found that using this technique increased disk write speeds by around 100 times compared with magnetic methods. That equates to a bit transfer rate of a blistering 40 femtoseconds - that's 40 millionths of a nanosecond - which has hardware experts around the world very impressed.
One of the biggest challenges now faced by the Dutch scientists is getting the technique to work in a more dense storage environment. The successful experiment used a 5-micron wide section of disk, but this doesn't compare with the sub-micron areas used by traditional magnetic storage devices.
However, not to be deterred, the team has donned its white coats once more and is now working hard to get its methods to work in smaller areas. This, it is hoped, will eventually result in hard drives that offer both massive storage capacities as well as super-fast write times.
Although the techniques have been made to work in a laboratory, prototypes of disks that use the new technique could still be years in the making. Don't expect to see them on the shelves of the local PC store any time soon - they're more likely to be 13 to 15 years away.