Perpendicular production

Showa Denko

has started to produce hard disk media based on perpendicular-magnetic-recording-technology.

Compared with conventional technology that stores magnetic data on a horizontal plane of the media, recording data vertically enables a dramatic increase in recording density.

Targeting the mobile music player market, the company’s first product is a 1.89” diameter disk that can store 40GBytes - double the capacity of conventional products of the same size.

Showa Denko plans to up its hard drive media production by 3.05 million disks per month, to 13.75 million disks per month by March 2006.

The company has also started commercial production of what it says is the world’s smallest 0.85” diameter HD media. Very-small-diameter HD media will soon be used in cellular phones to enable them to store music and TV programs transmitted via the Internet.