Hard drives are six times bigger with seasoning

Cooking fans rejoice: hard drive capacity can be increased more than six fold, and all it takes is a pinch of salt. Wired is reporting that a research team from Singapore has been experimenting with the world's favourite condiment. They've come to the conclusion that sodium chloride can turn a normal 500gigabit/inch drive platter into a massively dense 3.3 tera bit/inch one.

The reason for the increased capacity is that the salt additive and lithographic technique cause the magnetic grains which used to store data can be grown to a larger size and arrange themselves in a pattern that allows one bit to be saved per grain. What the impacts of this would be on long term storage – normally groups of grains are used for each bit providing some resilience - haven't been discussed yet.

With the physical limits of today's storage techniquesfast being reached, all manufacturers are looking for new ways to continue increasing drive capacity in line with historical trends – roughly double the space for the same cost every two years. While salt-powered storage is still strictly in the laboratory only, we may start seeing the first 'heat assisted' hard drives – which promise up to ten times current capacity - some time next year.