Fujitsu develops 1 terabit-per-inch hard drive tech
updated 01:25 pm EST, Thu January 18, 2007
Fujitsu 1Tbit Drive Tech
Fujitsu's storage division said today that it had developed a new recording technology for hard drives that could potentially balloon maximum storage to unprecedented levesl. The company has refined patterened media recording, a nanotechnology-based approach introduced in 2005, to create hard drives with recording pits that are only 25 nanometers apart. The result when combined with an improved perpendiular magnetic recording technique is a full terabit of data -- or 125GB -- per square inch. Such extra storage could be vital for frequently cramped notebooks and handhelds, Fujitsu says.
While the company has not said when buyers can expect drives at the new density to reach the market, it notes that patterned media recording is already in use today, pointing to a sharp spike in hard drive space within the next one to two years. The rival firm Hitachi has already introduced the first 1TB hard drive.
