3D harddrives

Within two years, 2007, we will have 3.5″ harddrives on the market with 1TB of storage (1024 GB). That’s at least what Hitachi wants us to believe since it has managed to make big leaps with 3D-harddrives.
3D-harddrives may sound odd and it’s probably a rather tricky technology. Many might wonder what a “3D-harddrive” is and the answer is quite simple.
You simply store data in three dimensions. With today’s harddrives the data is stored in two dimensions, via the  X and Y axle. The 3D-technology opens up the third, Z-axle, and makes it possible to store even more on the same area.

The first drives based on “perpendicular recording”, which the technology is called, will show up on the market at the end of 2005. But by then we’re not talking about any drastical improvements.
Todays two dimensional technology allows up to 120 gigabit (15 GB) per square inch and the “3D-drives” expected during 2005 will be able to store 130-150 gigabit per square inch.

When the technology has started to get accpeted by the market in 2007 the harddrives are expected to offer a capacity of 230 gigabit per square inch and thus 3.5″ harddrives with 1TB of storage or e.g. microdrives with 20GB of storage, where today the largest is 6GB.

We look forward to more capacity but we also hope that performance will be revolutionized soon.

Source: ZDnet