WD demos densest disk drive

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 23 October 2007 11:29

Business IT - Technology

Western Digital has set a new benchmark for hard drive density: 520G per square inch.

The company achieved this density using its own perpendicular magnetic recording - tunneling magneto-resistive (PMR-TuMR) head technology.

The company demonstrated 520G per square inch density in California earlier this month, but held back the announcement for this week's Perpendicular Magnetic Recording Conference in Tokyo.

Drives that are currently shipping in volume are around 200G per square inch, but WD officials predict that the new technology could deliver 3.5in drives holding as much as 3T of data by 2010.

"Our technology investments position WD with our customers as a leading choice for the highest, cutting-edge capacities," said Hossein Moghadam, the company's chief technology officer.

In related news, Hitachi recently announced new and smaller recording heads that may be used to achieve densities between 500G and 1T per square inch, leading to 4T drives by 2011.