Let's look 50 years ahead in time! Tom's Hardware Guide asked Seagate's Senior Field Applications Engineer Henrique Atzkern what he thinks the future holds for the hard disk drive.

My first job was as a Systems Engineer for IBM. During a visit to Endicott, NY for a training class, I saw a RAMAC stuck back in the corner of a lab.

You wouldn't believe the size of that thing. I don't remember the capacity (something around 1-2 mbytes IIRC), but it wasn't much by today's standards. Technology has come a long way.

That's funy that the apps engineer said they want to go to 10 nm... When I was working for maxtor on the new 500 and 620 gig drives (the 620's arnt out yet.. hehe) we where running 3.5nm, but we could very carfully control the height of the head through heat expansion by putting a heater in the head and making it fly heigher than it should, then actuating it down with heat... but I wont say too much on it, as I cant give away exactly how we did it... it's still undergoing the pattent aproval.