Driven to a record

Seagate Technology recently announced the results of a magnetic recording demonstration, setting a world record of 421Gbits per square inch (421 Gbit/in2).

The demonstration used perpendicular recording heads and media created with currently available production equipment that reportedly validates Seagate's ability to scale the technology for the foreseeable future without major technology changes or capital additions.

Dr. Mark Kryder of Seagate unveiled the findings during his keynote presentation at the IDEMA DISKCON show in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the hard drive.

According to Seagate, the demonstration is evidence of the continued momentum in disc drive innovation, and reaffirms the disc drive as most appropriate for storage when capacity and cost-effectiveness are required.

At the demonstrated density level, Seagate expects the capacity ranges to result in solutions ranging in 40GB to 275GB for 1-and 1.8-inch consumer electronics drives, 500GB for 2.5-inch notebook drives, and nearly 2.5TB for 3.5-inch desktop and enterprise class drives. At 2.5TB capacity, a hard drive would be capable of storing 41,650 hours of music, 800,000 digital photographs, 4,000 hours of digital video or 1,250 video games. Seagate anticipates that solutions at these density levels could begin to emerge in 2009.