Opinion: No more spin

Fortune tellers, and analysts, have been predicting the demise of hard
disks for almost as long as the crash-prone spinning platters have been available.

We had solid state drives back in the '80s but some genius or other figured out a way to stack more bits on a platter and real hard drives took over once more.

Now comes news of yet another version of solid state storage, which might finally be the nail in the hard drive coffin. We can only hope.

This new idea for storage is based on magnetism so you won't need any
power to keep the memory alive – and that's what's really killed off
the idea of getting rid of hard drives up until now.

They are superb at keeping what you parked on them in pristine condition until you apply power again, maybe months or even years later. Unfortunately
they're also superb at dropping a bearing or slapping a head into a
platter and rendering all your data useless.

Along with the new ST-MRAM (spin torque MRAM) comes the promise of instant-on computing. Despite the best reasons for replacing hard drives being data security followed closely by reduced power consumption, what's really likely to convince users to switch is instant-on.

There isn't a PC user from any of the warring camps who wouldn't trade a little-used body part for instant-on. Most of the appeal of the ASUS Eee and other flash-RAM equipped laptops is surely their ability to be ready for work whenever you are.

And the reduced noise couldn't hurt either. Less power for hard drives
means less power over all and therefore fewer fans. Maybe no fans.
Shhhh. That's better.

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