Dr. John S. Best This is Me

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1. 1. www.wavecorp.com

   www.wavecorp.com/blog/index.ph - [Cached]

   Published on: 5/1/2008   Last Visited: 5/11/2008

   "We changed the direction of the current and adjusted the materials to get good properties," said John Best, chief technologist for Hitachi's data-storage unit.By doing so, Hitachi said it has created the world's smallest disk drive heads in the 30-nanometer to 50-nanometer range, or about 2,000 times smaller than the width of an average human hair.Other hard drive companies are working on similar technology as well, Rydning said.He predicted the entire disk drive industry will begin migrating to this new type of GMR-based technology in 2009.
   
   Read the rest of the article over at MSNBC.com

2. 2. The Tech Museum Awards - Technology Benefiting Humanity | About The Tech Awards | People | Global Leadership Council

   www.techawards.org/about/peopl - [Cached]

   Published on: 3/10/2008   Last Visited: 3/10/2008

   John Best, Ph.D., Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, Inc.

3. 3. v2.eetimes.com

   v2.eetimes.com/consumer/showAr - [Cached]

   Published on: 1/7/2008   Last Visited: 1/7/2008

   But in a few years, it will not be unusual for homes to have perhaps 10 hard disks-in computers, set-top boxes, video recorders, MP3 players and even cell phones," said John Best, CTO of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (GST), created by the merger of Hitachi and IBM's drive businesses.
   ...
   Still, Best said, it's important to keep the consumer opportunity-the new and somewhat unknown factor in the storage game-in balance with the traditional and still-vast market for computer storage.
   
   "A lot of the excitement is in the consumer segment, which is the fastest-growing area, though it's still very small," said Best, formerly the head of the IBM Almaden Research Center.
   ...
   Our view is it doesn't make sense to go less than a 1-inch drive," said Best of Hitachi GST.
   
   Seagate's Kryder disagreed.
   ...
   Best of Hitachi GST said perpendicular recording "in its first two generations probably provides a fairly modest areal density increase, on the order of a factor of two or three."
   
   Bigger advances will come when perpendicular recoding is linked to a new generation of so-called patterned media, Best said.Rather than magnetize several grains on a platter, patterned media promises a move toward magnetizing a single grain at a time, as long as drive makers can find economical ways to read and write the patterns.
   
   "I'm a bit of a patterned-media enthusiast myself, but I couldn't predict the time frame it might happen," Best said.
   ...
   Best, however, said he harbors doubts about the technology: "Probe storage doesn't scale well to products of multiple square inches in size.
   ...
   The often-discussed concept of holographic storage has faced a lack of suitable materials for years, said Best."I don't think there is a viable dark-horse technology out there to replace the hard disk for the next 10 years," he said.