Toshiba’s breakthrough could lead to 25TB 3.5-inch drives

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If you think hard drive sizes are unbelievable today you haven’t seen anything yet according to Toshiba’s presentation at the Magnetic Recording Conference in San Diego. ExtremeTech reports that the company has announced a breakthrough in bit-patterned media research that could lead to mega drives with capacities much higher than the 2TB to 3TB drives of today.
Bit-patterned media divides the recording surface of a disk into uniform sections compared to a traditional disc which has bits spread out across the entire surface. Each uniform section contains a few 17nm dots which are each capable of holding one bit of data. This leads to higher areal density which translates to larger drive sizes. Bit-patterned media also means faster read and write times since there are nonmagnetic gaps between data which can act as markers to allow data to be retrieved and updated quicker.
What this means is that instead of the 541GB per square inch density currently possible with today’s drives, bit-patterned media increases density to 2.5TB of data per square inch meaning 25TB of storage could be offered on a 3.5-inch drive.
The bit-patterned media drive is still in the prototype phase, but drives using the technology are expected to begin appearing in 2013.
 
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