SATAThe more data the harder the hard disk? What is the reason why HDDs and SSDs each become heavier?
SATAThe more data the harder the hard disk? What is the reason why HDDs and SSDs each become heavier?
harddrive SSD OEMSATA has ever wondered about the file data of the computer in the home SATA+8618750919058, probably weight? Different formats of photo images, video videos, music tracks, editing files, text files or form files
Recently, a popular science article circulated on the Internet, which was widely reported in several online media reports. The paper states that computer hard drives can be loaded with data that can make them heavier. Although the information of the digital archive is composed of 0 and 1 QR codes, it is in a virtual format; But hard drives are always recording digital information in physical form, and even when it comes to physical objects, their weight has the opportunity to change. The computer hard disks on the market are usually either HDDs or SSD, the original two hard disks are based on the difference in the principle of recording data, and there are also different performances in weight changes after the file is full.
The article points out that the traditional hard disk HDD records the magnetic pole change record storage disk, which contains magnetic substances, and records digital information by modifying the direction of the magnetic poles of the magnetic materials. Before and after the magnetic pole modification, the hard disk did not increase or decrease the substance (because only the magnetic pole was changed), so even if the capacity of an HDD was full, the weight did not increase. However, when the HDD is energized, it is based on the “weight of electrons”, so its weight changes; After the power is cut off, the HDD returns to its original weight.
SSD The situation is more complicated. SSD SSD recording data principle is the same as USB fingers, all use flash memory to store data. Based on computer data binary, the flash memory is “electronically recording the digital information of 0 and 1”, and the “electron has weight” (although it is really insignificant, it is only 9.109 x 10^-31 kg), so the more SSD storage disks, the more its weight increases. The article also takes a 256GB SSD as an example to illustrate that if the hard disk is full of files, half of which is “1”, that is, “1.1 megabytes of electrons”, the weight of the SSD will increase by 10^-18 kilograms, but humans cannot distinguish this “negligible” weight difference by the senses.
the statement that “increased number of electrons makes hard disks heavier” controversial? “Data changes the weight of the hard disk” Has another theoretical basis?
Many netizens pointed out that the content of the popular science article may be wrong. On this page, some netizens pointed out that the HDD will not change its weight regardless of whether it is energized or not, because the electron itself exists in all atoms, and although the charge generated by the electricity will promote the displacement of the electron, it is no different from the operation of the water pipe: “Squeeze the new (water) from the entrance, and squeeze the old (water) out of the outlet.” So the total mass in the range of the hard disk remains unchanged. SSDs are also not aggravated because the actually changed potential affects the static access mode of the logic gate, rather than really feeding/recording electrons per 1 bit bit.
Another netizen on the same page responded that the SSD’s flash memory uses “the electric field caused by the capacitance effect on the island to store information”, and the article calculates the charge written to the bit as static electricity is “too exaggerated”. His view is slightly different from the netizen mentioned above, believing that the quality of the SSD hard drive may “rise slightly”. This is due to the “law of conservation of energy”: the mass increase is driven by “the energy of the capacitor in the valve causes the overall potential energy of the SSD to rise slightly”. Similar discussions and insights can be found on another web page.
Although the phrase “one data unit with one electron” is too crude, there is still room for review. The phenomenon that storing too much data increases the weight of the hard drive is not entirely unfounded. This theory has been supported by scientists’ theories.
An article published on the inverse website in 2016 introduced the theory of John D. Kubiatowi, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. Kubiatowicz said that flash memory is based on whether it can “capture” electrons to distinguish between 1 and 0, generate bits, and write digital information. Although the number of electrons does not change, once they are captured (the data is stored), their energy level increases. According to the “law of conservation of energy”, its weight (mass) also increases. The energy of a “captured” electron is greater than that of an uncontrolled electron? High, Kubiatowicz’s conservative estimate of such a difference is joules per Bit of 10^-15 joules. He also pointed out that even if the Kindle e-book contains thousands of books, the weight increases by only 1 attogram (that is, 10^-18g)
How much data is stored to make the hard drive feel heavy? According to Weber’s law (the law that shows the relationship between mental and physical quantities), humans can perceive that the weight difference between two objects is more than 5%. Taking the iPhone 6 weighing 129 grams as an example, there must be a 6.45-gram gap before we can feel the difference. However, the amount of data stored by mobile phones at present cannot accumulate to such a large weight.
Kubiatowicz theory received attention from the popular science community as early as 2011 and was reported by the New York Times. Kubiatowicz is also quoted in the famous popular science youtuber “Vsauce” short film.
Vsauce gives examples of life to explain (or can be seen as a deduction, not necessarily fully agreed). A normal email contains a piece of text and an attachment, and is about 50K bytes (Byte) in size. 1K has 1024 bytes and 1 byte has 8 bits, so this message contains 409600 bits. On average, about half of the Bit is “1” and the other half is “0”, so there are 204800 “1” information that needs a capacitor to store, so a total of about 8 billion electrons are needed. Assuming that an electron for data storage weighs 2 × 10^−30 pounds, a 50K email weighs about 1.6 × 10^−20 pounds, which is about the weight of 21,000 lead atoms. In 2011, the global network data was about 5 trillion terabytes, and Vsauce calculated that the total weight of the data was about the same as that of a strawberry based on Kubiatowicz’s theory. However, the amount of network data has grown significantly over the past few years, and the total weight of the “Internet” should have increased many times.
the theory of the finalization of the theory. Shushengjia Power Grid said that due to the large amount of data can only make the hard disk have a negligible weight change (after all, the weight of electricity can not be measured by the instrument), there is also a lot of room for discussion about the mechanism of electronic quality change. “NetEase Technology” on the topic of the article emphasizes that the HDD hard disk after the power of the electronic movement process will appear discrete conditions, but also inevitably cause electronic retention. Strictly speaking, the weight of the hard disk may change, but the computer hard disk (in this case, HDD) is different from the USB that locks the electron with the capacitor Xiaoxiao, and although the electron has weight, it may only have a “larger chance” in the memory, rather than being locked inside the component. The weight of the hard drive may be reduced, may increase, or may remain unchanged (the same weight after an HDD power outage is most likely). harddriveSSD OEMSATA
