Hitachi has announced a new read/write head technology which will make it possible to quadruple the storage capacity of mechanical harddrives. Hitachi estimates the first drives using this technology sometime in 2009 and by 2011 the full potential of the technology will result in harddrives with up to 4 TB of storage capacity, and notebook equivalents at 1TB. Hitachi will unveil its research during the Perpendicular Magnetic Recording Conference (PMRC 2007), which opens up today in Tokyo, Japan.
"Researchers at Hitachi have successfully reduced existing recording heads by more than a factor of two to achieve new heads in the 30-50 nanometer (nm) range, which is up to 2,000 times smaller than the width of an average human hair (approx. 70-100 microns). Called current perpendicular-to-the-plane giant magnetoresistive1 (CPP-GMR) heads."
All in all this means that Hitachi would be able to make ceramic discs with a density of 500 Gb/inch², 2.5 times the 200 Gb/inch² the high-end drives of today sport. More information on Hitachi's new technology can be found in the press release.
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Hitachi aims to quadruple storage capacity of harddrives by 2011
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