Suhit Gupta
04-04-2005, 02:30 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://news.com.com/Hitachi+claims+leap+in+drive+density/2100-7337_3-5650919.html?tag=nefd.top' target='_blank'>http://news.com.com/Hitachi+claims+leap+in+drive+density/2100-7337_3-5650919.html?tag=nefd.top</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Hitachi Global Storage will come out with hard drives containing 230 gigabits of data per square inch, the company is expected to announce Monday, and that means 20GB iPod Minis. The company is expected to release the denser drives in 2007. The density breakthrough represents a refinement in perpendicular recording. Today, hard drives record and store data in a longitudinal fashion, with the read/write heads scanning over a horizontal plane. In perpendicular recording, data bits are aligned vertically, allowing for more data to be squeezed into a finite area. Put another way, data will go from being stored on a two-dimensional XY grid to living in a three-dimensional XYZ space."</i><br /><br />The current maximum drive size in the mini MP3-player market (iPod mini, iRiver H10, etc.) is 6GB. This new technology will catapult drive sizes to 20GB. Unfortunately, we will have to wait a couple of years.