Hard Disk Density Doubled

Hitachi's hard disk division has pushed a real density to 230Gbit per square inch, which could lead to one inch drives with 230GByte of storage within two years. The trick employed by Hitachi Global Storage Technologies is called perpendicular recording, which the company says can increase density by a factor of 10.Using this technique, standard 3.5 inch drives could reach 1Tbyte by 2007, claimed the firm. As its name suggests, perpendicular recording aligns data bits at 90 degrees to the plane of the recording medium. Today's hard drives use longitudinal recording. The inevitable trade-off of packing more data into the available space is that the recording head must be closer to the recording medium. Getting to 230Gbit/in² meant getting to heads within 10nm of the platter. "We are at the cusp of the most significant hard drive technology transition of the past decade, and it's one that holds so much promise for the hard drive and consumer electronics industries," said Jun Naruse, CEO of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.