Hitachi to bring in 1 TB of HDD

Hitachi has announced new advancements in recording technology that the company hopes will set the stage for ultra-high capacities such as a 20 GB Microdrive or a one TB 3.5-inch hard drive.

To achieve this, Hitachi demonstrated data density at 230 gigabits per square inch on perpendicular recording. The company believes that these densities will be implemented in commercial hard drive products in 2007.


Perpendicular technology gets its name from the vertical alignment of data bits on the plane of the disk, which takes less room compared to the horizontal orientation of today's longitudinal recording technology.

To be accurately recorded and read, the more closely packed perpendicular bits also require a closer association between the read/write head and the recording media. Hitachi achieved the 230 Gb per square inch density by manipulating the head and media so that the distance between them is 10 nanometers or 1/10,000th of a human hair.

Within five to seven years, increasing performance with perpendicular recording could result in microdrives with 60 GB of storage capacity, the company said.

Hitachi reportedly will actually come out with drives that use perpendicular-recording techniques toward the end of this year, but these drives will hold only around 2.5 GB to 2.9 GB per square centimeter - and will basically serve as a transitional technology. Longitudinal recording drives are expected to top out at 2.3 GB per square centimeter.

"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, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

"As the biggest supplier of small-form-factor hard drives, 2.5-inch and below, consumers' demand for storing more data on smaller devices has provided a strong impetus for us to pursue perpendicular recording with a greater sense of urgency," said Naruse.

Perpendicular recording has its roots in the late 19th century work of Danish scientist Valdemar Poulsen, who is generally considered the first person to magnetically record sound using perpendicular recording.

(source:techtree.com)