"Perpendicular recording" technology advances! Hard drives still yet to hit market

[Alexander Turcic]

From Pride Of Lions this morning: It's just like technology; the big gets bigger and the small gets smaller. Laptop drives capacity is set to dwarf what we're now used to, yet maintain their standard 2.5" footprint. Internal hard drives capacity is inching ever-closer to that "t" word: terabyte. One-half terabyte drives announced.

Techworld reported yesterday that Seagate has claimed a world first with a new 160GB, 2.5in laptop hard drive. The drive is one of a series of new products, including new 500GB drives.

It works by standing the magnetic fields that represent data bits upright. In today's commercially available drives, the fields lay flat on the disk surface, but standing them upright takes up less space, so more can be packed onto the disk.

Seagate's drive is the first to hit the market, at least according to Seagate. Hitachi is field-testing 100GB drives, but has yet to announce a sale date. In April, Fujitsu announced 200GB drives using perpendicular technology, but not until 2007.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Seagate is also going to offer new 1" and CF card form-factor drives in 4Gb and 8GB versions.

[Bob Russell]

And don't forget the hit video that goes with the Hitachi technology... I guarantee that if you watch it you'll never forget it! (Don't forget to turn on the sound.)

[gadgetguru]

Yeah,that tune's still ringing in my head, every time I read the word Perpendicular. Going Perpendicular!...

[Pride Of Lions]

It is a catchy tune. This is what happens when the "Schoolhouse Rock" generation grows up. (I might have to go listen to my box set now.)
POL9A