Tiny 500gig Quantum Disk storage - Too good to be true?

[Bob Russell]

Some products are quite compelling even when you don't know if they are for real. This one was found by the folks at Gizmodo buried in the depths of the exhibition hall, and it really does sound almost too good to be true.

It's a very small quantum computing storage device from a company called "Atom Disk" claiming 500gig storage and 4gig/sec transfer rates. "They work in Linux and Windows XP... Sizes of up to 4TB come in something the size of a book of matches (the laptops weigh 4.18 pounds)."

A bit expensive right now because a laptop using this storage is expected to sell for $17,500 but you know how fast new technology prices drop. Wasn't the first videotape recorder more expensive than that? But you can easily buy one now for less than $100.

With the pent-up desire for large scale storage on mobile devices, a true technology fan cannot help but be excited by the thought of such a storage product, but I'm pretty sure there's a catch -- you know, some small detail like a release date in the year 2040.

The Gizmodo folks promise to investigate further, so maybe we'll find out more soon.

If you want the official company scoop, take a look at this page.

(via Gizmodo )

[TadW]

With 4gb/sec, I could transfer five movies in one second. In other words, if you give me this 500gb disk, I could fill it with 625 movies in 2 minutes. Impressive, isn't it?

[Brian]

Tam Hanna wrote about this on his blog earlier this year mentioning the same implications for handhelds that Bob mentioned. IF this is true and not a bunch of smoke and mirrors and bogus claims, then this will be a revolutionary development in solid-state storage. My Spidey-sense, however, is tingling, especially after seeing this video (WMV) .

[rmeister0]

I call hoax.

I mean really: we're waiting for 25/50 gb next gen DVD drives to hit the market, and microdrives are topping out around 6gb.

Hard drives top out at 300 mbps for SATA II and 320 for Ultra Scsi (and just try actually getting that kind of performance!).

Yet we always get stuff like this, or the 300 gb holographic drive. Remember, it isn't real until you can walk into a store and buy it for cash.

Dvorak's blog discusses this too, without a strong conclusion: http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=2742

Finally, if I were the Atom Chip Corporation, I'd be really, REALLY worried about the word "Quantum". These guys (http://www.quantum.com/) might want to have a word with them.

Finally, take a long look at their web site (http://atomchip.com). This is not the web site of a professional company. Be sure to visit the "European Awards" page and marvel at the very Academy-Award looking statue.

If they really have a 4 Ghz notebook with 500 gb storage, I'm sure PC World would love to get their hands on one and make it a cover story. But I'm sure there's a reason we'll never see that review. From Atom Chip's own web site:

2. Despite the fast speed of the new RAM and CPU, the overall speed of the computers depended on other slower components mounted on the motherboard of the computers. The real speed of the system is limited by the fact that the operational systems used in SG112C and SG220-2C have slow work speed compared to the capabilities of the new RAM and processor. However, today it is the fastest personal computer on the market!

I've never laughed so hard. The "operational system" has "slow work speed"???

[Alexander Turcic]

Sounds too good to be true to me. Check out Gizmodo's "encounter" with the Atom guys:

http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/pcs/li...irl-147155.php