The way technology moves forward, 300 TB on a 3.5-inch hard drive may not seem so big in 2010. But here in 2007, it’s a lot of data, especially when Seagate’s largest single hard drive capacity is a paltry 750 GB in comparison.

-Correction- The 300 TB is actually terabits, and not terabytes. Therefore, the new Seagate drive in 2010 will store approximately 37.5 terabytes, and while that's just over 10 times smaller than a real 300 terabyte drive, it's still massive compared to the drives we are using today. And who knows what we'll have by 2011, or 2012!

The technology used today to expand hard drive capacities is called perpendicular recording, where bits are recorded to a hard drive in a vertical fashion, instead of horizontal, allowing many more bits to be recorded into the same physical space.

To pull the 37.5 terabyte (or 300 terabit) rabbit out of the hat, technology comes to the rescue once again. This time, Seagate will use a technology called heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR). These isn't much detail on exactly how this works, but a single square inch of hard disk space will be able to store 50 terabits of data.

University of Central Florida Chemistry Professor Kevin D. Belfield and his team have developed a new technology which allows users to record and store massive amounts of data on a single disc using their Two-Photon 3-D Optical Data Storage system. Belfield's team figured out a way to use lasers to compact large amounts of information onto a DVD while maintaining excellent quality. The information is stored permanently without the possibility of damage. The process involves shooting two different wavelengths of light onto the recording surface. The use of two lasers creates a very specific image that is sharper than what current techniques can render. Depending on the color (wavelength) of the light, information is written onto a disk. The information is highly compacted, so the disk isn’t much thicker. It's like a typical DVD.

Medical records: Embed a Memory Spot chip into a hospital patient's wrist band and full medical and drug records can be kept securely available.

Audio photo: Attach a chip to the prints of photographs and add music, commentary or ambient sound to enhance the enjoyment of viewing photos.

Digital postcards: Send a traditional holiday postcard to family and friends with a chip containing digital pictures of a vacation, plus sounds and even video clips.

Document notes: A Memory Spot chip attached to a paper document can include a history of all the corrections and additions made to the text, as well as voice notes and graphical images.

Perfect photocopies: A Memory Spot chip attached to a cover sheet eliminates the need to copy the original document. Just read the perfect digital version into the photocopier and the result will be sharp output every time, no matter how many copies are needed, and avoiding any possibility of the originals jamming in the feeder.

Security passes: Add a chip to an identity card or security pass for the best of both worlds -- a handy card with secure, relevant digital information included.

Anti-counterfeit tags: Counterfeit drugs are a significant problem globally. Memory Spot chips can contain secure information about the manufacture and quality of pharmaceuticals. When added to a drug container, this can prove their authenticity. A similar process could be used to verify high-value engineering and aviation components.

It is very small compared to the Ram and flash chips on the market, but it is a start.

In fact many companies, including IBM, have been working on the nanotechnology behind Mram for around a decade.

Put simply, Mram stores data magnetically, in the same way a hard drive does. This makes it non-volatile.

It is also very quick, and does not wear out over time. So it seems to have the advantages of both RAM and flash, with none of the disadvantages.

Only don't expect these new chips to hit your price sensitive consumer electonics just yet. The first markets for MRAM will most likely be automotive or industrial settings where durability is critical. So hold tight and let the invisible hand work some magic, mkay?

S3 is proving to be particularly attractive to community-based media companies - homegrown photos, video, even music. Altexa, Elephant Drive, Jungle Disk, MediaSilo, Ookles, Plum and SmugMug are some of the start-ups that are currently using Amazon's S3. Online photo sharing company SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill seems to be one happy customer, with a good reason!

He was facing a hefty tab for storage - Smug Mug is adding about ten terabytes worth of photos every month and claims he saved almost $500,000 in storage expenses. His monthly tab just in storage is around the $1500. An Apple 7TB XServe RAID costs about $13,000. Of course there are cheaper options, but still it is a lot of savings.

S3's early success makes you think that if the on-demand infrastructure can be delivered at an affordable price, the cost of setting up an online business is going to decline even further, perhaps prompting a whole cycle of new entrepreneurial activity. Amazon's Alexa platform plays into this trend quite well since it allows developers to process and analyze data on Amazon, store it (on S3), and serve it back out to the world. (Amazon, after all is the harbinger of Web 2.0 trends.)

Write, read, and delete objects containing from 1 byte to 5 gigabytes of data each. The number of objects you can store is unlimited.

Each object is stored and retrieved via a unique, developer-assigned key.

Authentication mechanisms are provided to ensure that data is kept secure from unauthorized access. Objects can be made private or public, and rights can be granted to specific users.

Uses standards-based REST and SOAP interfaces designed to work with any Internet-development toolkit.

Built to be flexible so that protocol or functional layers can easily be added. Default download protocol is HTTP. A BitTorrent™ protocol interface is provided to lower costs for high-scale distribution. Additional interfaces will be added in the future.

Seagate's new drive, the Momentus 5400.3, was being shipped as of Monday, the Scotts Valley, Calif.-based company said. The shift to perpendicular recording allows it to bump up the maximum capacity of its notebook drive to 160 gigabytes from 120 gigabytes.

The 2.5-inch drive costs $325, compared to about $240 for the 120 gig model. Seagate plans to extend the new recording technology to other notebook drives, as well its 1-inch drives used in handheld gadgets and 3.5-inch drives for desktop PCs.

"Our transition to perpendicular technology increases our ability to meet the needs of our growing customer base," said Karl Chicca, general manager of Seagate's Personal Storage unit.

Other drive makers also have either announced products or plans that include perpendicular recording. At the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this month, Toshiba unveiled its second 1.8-inch drive that relies on the new technology.

AOL said Xdrive would continue to serve existing customers. Xdrive manages an online storage platform that lets subscribers access and protect their digital assets, such as music and video, from any location. It offers users storage safety and security and automatic backup, AOL said.

Rival Internet companies are touting online storage offerings designed to let subscribers store anything they want in secure servers. AOL has also been showing interest in expanded storage for its members.

By using all of the media instead of just the surface, holographic storage promises breakthroughs in storage density and cost and data transfer rates. It differs from spinning disk technology in that the media and head are fixed and the disk rotates very slowly; the company doesn't even track RPMs. Those differences also make holographic storage more reliable.

The initial product, a 130mm disk, is expected to hold 300 gigabytes (GB) of data — the equivalent of 462 CDs — with a transfer rate of 20 megabytes (MB) per second. InPhase says capacities for its "Tapestry" family of drives will reach 1.6 terabytes (TB) on a single disk by 2010.

Mr Pait thinks that although many people are already living an accumulative terabyte lifestyle, in about five years PCs will have five terabytes of storage on board.

One terabyte is the equivalent of 1,024GB, enough to hold more than 240,000 songs at the standard encoding rate for digital music files.

This will only be possible because of perpendicular recording methods, which Seagate, Hitachi, and others, have to exploit.