A lubricant called SHP could be used to speed up your hard drive, according to recent work done by PhD. candidate Wei Xiao in the University of Illinois.

The lubricant, which has to be able to cope with the 10,000-plus revolutions per minute typical in modern hard drive operation, provides a coating which shields the disk from damage and makes performance faster. A substance that is incredibly sticky is needed for this job, otherwise it will fly off of the disk.

I don't see how it could increase performance per se, maybe it just provides a way to increase it in the future.

I could see it spinning a bit faster then 7200rpm with this lube, or something along those lines, and that will give it the .0001% performance increase

if you read the article, your standard 7200rpm can turn at raptor speeds, 10K

"In designing the lube, Xiao had to find a compound that could take the 10,000-plus revolutions per minute typical of computer hard drives"

.:EdiT:.

"The lubricant needs to be solid enough that the sliders don't sink. But it needs to be liquid enough so that any debris from contact between the head and surface would sink back in," says Xiao's advisor James Economy, Ph.D., a professor with the school's department of material science and engineering. He came to Illinois after 14 years of heading up polymer research at IBM. "

14 years to read this

The point of this isn't about lubricants invented for HDs but that this is a new lubricant, better than the ones used at the moment.

If you read the "scientific" article linked from the Inq you see that the new material can withstand RPMs over 10K unlike the current ones. It also offers less "friction" so the arms can move faster over the platter surface resulting in smaller seek times. And of course better protection against head crashes.

hmm a sticky lubricant isnt that an oxymoron?

yup, that thats what it is too.