San Jose, Calif. — Toshiba Corp. announced Tuesday (Aug. 16) it has started shipping production quantities of a 1.8-inch hard disk drive using perpendicular recording to pack 40-Gbytes of memory storage on a single platter, about 10-Gbytes per platter more than on its existing drives.
That link is a trip. Thanks Doormat. And thanks for the excellent information Patentman.
It's apparent that at some point the physical limitations of magnet storage will require finding an alternative technology if today's data storage increases are to be maintained indefinitely. I know that won't be for a while. But if and when we do "get perpendicular" and increase storage capacity by a factor of 10 what comes next? Stacking? :P
Here is a link to a video - Dr. Hans Coufal of IBM's Almaden Labs' - May 3, 2005 - that explores some current options and includes interesting history and images.
Oddly enough, when I first read of perpendicular technology (in regards to hard drives, at least) was in a 2002 press release from Maxtor. They claimed to have a lead in this technology and that others would be forced to follow their lead to remain competitive. Although they stated that the technology would be used in their drives in 2005, I have yet to see any announcement. Seems Seagate beat them to market with a technology, in which, they claimed to be a leader.
Where is WesternDigital in all this? Are they ignoring perpendicular recording? I hope for their sake that they get cracking on it. They are the furthest behind in platter capacity vs. Seagate/Hitachi/Maxtor.
Just a minor correction in the paragraph after the first weboepedia quote. Change the "GB" in this line to "Gb" since we're talking about bits, not bytes.
>> "...greater than 150Gbpsi (GB per square inch)."
All of this stuff has been long known. I used to work at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as an Examiner in the Art of Magentic Recording, and applications directed towards this sort of technology have been filed for quite some time (perpendicular media application were filed as early as 1990; AFC media as early as the mid 90's).
Lots of stuff has been done to improve perpendicular media over the years. For example, alloying elements and oxides have been introduced into the recording layer so as to separate the grains from one another, thereby preventing intergranular eachange coupling, which reduces storage capacity; Higher coercivity alloys (coercivity being "the magnetic energy holding the bits in place on the medium") have been developed (albeit expensively, as they contain relatively high concentrations of rare elements such as platinum; and heat treatments have been developed to improve the ordering of the grains within the alloy.
The so called "keeper layer" perpendicular media dicussed above (see the diagram above which lists a "soft" layer under the recording layer). In keeper layer media, a "soft" magnetic layer is placed under the recording layer (either directly in contact with or spaced from the recording layer by an interlayer, which may either couple or decouple the soft magentic layer to the recording layer), in an attempt to improve the orientation of the magentic domains perpendicular to the surface of the media (In reality, the domains in perpendicular media are not oriented 90 degrees to the surface of the substrate as shown. Rather, they are ordered at an angle to the substrate). This keeper layer does, in some instances, improve perpendicular orientation, but, as far as I know, to date no one has been able to overcome the noise problem created by the presence of the soft magnetic layer (noise, in that the fies generated by the soft magentic layer interferes with the field generated by the magentic head, thereby reducing the resolution, for lack of a better word, of the head.).
While improving storage density of magentic media is an interesting problem, I think a more interesting (and difficult) problem in magnetic recording is once we are able to produce a media capable of that storage density, how will we read or write to it? Improving the theoretical storage capacity of a disk is one thing. Overcoming the resolution problem that is presented by reading and recording magnetic fields at that scale is another. In other words, theoretical density is one thing, realized density is another.
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Poser - Wednesday, January 4, 2006 - link
Big piece of information missing from the article -- what's the current density of hard disks in Gbpsi?BBond - Wednesday, August 17, 2005 - link
San Jose, Calif. — Toshiba Corp. announced Tuesday (Aug. 16) it has started shipping production quantities of a 1.8-inch hard disk drive using perpendicular recording to pack 40-Gbytes of memory storage on a single platter, about 10-Gbytes per platter more than on its existing drives.http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jht...">Toshiba ships 'perpendicular' disk drive
johnsonx - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link
what happens if you snort pixie dust?BBond - Friday, July 22, 2005 - link
That link is a trip. Thanks Doormat. And thanks for the excellent information Patentman.It's apparent that at some point the physical limitations of magnet storage will require finding an alternative technology if today's data storage increases are to be maintained indefinitely. I know that won't be for a while. But if and when we do "get perpendicular" and increase storage capacity by a factor of 10 what comes next? Stacking? :P
Here is a link to a video - Dr. Hans Coufal of IBM's Almaden Labs' - May 3, 2005 - that explores some current options and includes interesting history and images.
http://www.calit2.net/events/popup.php?id=553
bersl2 - Friday, July 22, 2005 - link
#4: "Get Perpendicular" FTWAnton74 - Thursday, July 21, 2005 - link
#4 - thanks for the link to that video, it's a hoot!:-D
MrEMan - Thursday, July 21, 2005 - link
Why was Maxtor excluded from the article?Are they not working on similar hard disk technology?
theprofessor - Wednesday, August 3, 2005 - link
Oddly enough, when I first read of perpendicular technology (in regards to hard drives, at least) was in a 2002 press release from Maxtor. They claimed to have a lead in this technology and that others would be forced to follow their lead to remain competitive. Although they stated that the technology would be used in their drives in 2005, I have yet to see any announcement. Seems Seagate beat them to market with a technology, in which, they claimed to be a leader.mmp121 - Wednesday, July 20, 2005 - link
Where is WesternDigital in all this? Are they ignoring perpendicular recording? I hope for their sake that they get cracking on it. They are the furthest behind in platter capacity vs. Seagate/Hitachi/Maxtor.Doormat - Wednesday, July 20, 2005 - link
Why not just link to get get perpendicular video hitachi made?http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/research/recording_h...
Houdani - Wednesday, July 20, 2005 - link
Just a minor correction in the paragraph after the first weboepedia quote. Change the "GB" in this line to "Gb" since we're talking about bits, not bytes.>> "...greater than 150Gbpsi (GB per square inch)."
Oh, and, um, yeah, what patentman said. Uh huh, uh huh.
Seriously, I applaud your knowledge. Dang! Nice contribution.
patentman - Tuesday, July 19, 2005 - link
All of this stuff has been long known. I used to work at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as an Examiner in the Art of Magentic Recording, and applications directed towards this sort of technology have been filed for quite some time (perpendicular media application were filed as early as 1990; AFC media as early as the mid 90's).Lots of stuff has been done to improve perpendicular media over the years. For example, alloying elements and oxides have been introduced into the recording layer so as to separate the grains from one another, thereby preventing intergranular eachange coupling, which reduces storage capacity; Higher coercivity alloys (coercivity being "the magnetic energy holding the bits in place on the medium") have been developed (albeit expensively, as they contain relatively high concentrations of rare elements such as platinum; and heat treatments have been developed to improve the ordering of the grains within the alloy.
The so called "keeper layer" perpendicular media dicussed above (see the diagram above which lists a "soft" layer under the recording layer). In keeper layer media, a "soft" magnetic layer is placed under the recording layer (either directly in contact with or spaced from the recording layer by an interlayer, which may either couple or decouple the soft magentic layer to the recording layer), in an attempt to improve the orientation of the magentic domains perpendicular to the surface of the media (In reality, the domains in perpendicular media are not oriented 90 degrees to the surface of the substrate as shown. Rather, they are ordered at an angle to the substrate). This keeper layer does, in some instances, improve perpendicular orientation, but, as far as I know, to date no one has been able to overcome the noise problem created by the presence of the soft magnetic layer (noise, in that the fies generated by the soft magentic layer interferes with the field generated by the magentic head, thereby reducing the resolution, for lack of a better word, of the head.).
While improving storage density of magentic media is an interesting problem, I think a more interesting (and difficult) problem in magnetic recording is once we are able to produce a media capable of that storage density, how will we read or write to it? Improving the theoretical storage capacity of a disk is one thing. Overcoming the resolution problem that is presented by reading and recording magnetic fields at that scale is another. In other words, theoretical density is one thing, realized density is another.
goku21 - Tuesday, July 19, 2005 - link
Very interesting read, but I wonder what sizes could be achevied(sp?) if both methods were used to create a hard drive.