Fujitsu promises 1.2TB notebook drives

Fujitsu's research labs today said they had developed a new process that could quadruple the level of storage in notebook hard disks in the relatively near future. While today's drives rely on perpendicular magnetic recording almost exclusively to top out at 300GB, A joint development between the electronics maker and the Kanagawa Academy of Science and Technology has developed a new process for making aluminum oxide nanoholes that are "ideally" ordered in patterns on the hard disk platters, allowing for much finer-grained recording of individual data bits over a large surface when combined with perpendicular technology.

The process currently works with today's relatively crude magnetic write heads by using a sparser 100 nanometer distance between nanoholes but could achieve a density of one terabit (125GB) per square inch with advancements; a 25 nanometer pitch has already been demonstrated as of January but did not share the same ideal patterns as today's announced technology, Fujitsu says. Using the new process combined with a higher density is said to lead to 1.2TB, 2.5-inch disks that use only two platters. The company would not issue a timetable for when drives using the technique would be available but said that it would be implemented for both home and professional purposes, such as notebook computers.