Bytes collection
Diamonds can be a computer's best friend, say researchers at the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California, USA. They claim that diamond coating could allow computer disk-drives to hold nearly 20 times more data than the existing drives. Hard drives can store merely four gigabytes of data. But the prototype diamond-drive developed by the IBM stores about 20 gigabytes. The new drive allows thousands of tiny disks to be stacked within the unit. The Berkeley team found that the diamond coating is much harder than hydrogenated carbon, meaning the new disks would last longer. The product would be available in the market within 10 months.