New tests, from Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands, show pulses from ultra-powerful lasers outperform magnets by two orders of magnitude. By flipping polarity of the laser to either positive or negative, binary sequences of one or zero are indicated. Data in these tests transfered in intervals of 40 quadrillionths of a second, which is about a hundred times faster than we've got now, which means we could store a hundred times as many Lol cats pictures in the same amount of time. Oh, efficiency! [GT] Lighting a Fire Under Hard Drives (via Crunchgear) Related posts Ewedrive launches pay-as-you-go online data backup service PNY boosts capacity and adds some swivel to its Attaché drives Freecom Hard Drive Pro - up to 750GB of storage with USB/Firewire