Toshiba moves upwards with new perpendicular HDD

Toshiba has released a new 1.8-inch hard disk drive based on perpendicular magnetic recording that can hold 40GB of data on a single platter to provide greater storage capacity for workers.

Perpendicular recording has its roots in the late 19th century work of Danish scientist Valdemar Poulsen, who is generally considered the first person to magnetically record sound using perpendicular recording.

The technology gets its name from the vertical alignment of data bits on the plane of the disk, which takes less room in contrast to the horizontal orientation of today's longitudinal recording technology.

Reseachers have been finding that longitudinal recording is losing its ability to maintain data integrity at areal densities much beyond 120GB per square inch. In contrast, perpendicular recording allows 230GB to be stored per square inch, which is almost double today's highest longitudinal recording densities.

Scott Maccabe, the vice president of Toshiba Storage Device Division is very excited about the release of the MK4007GALHDD 1.8-inch HDD. He said that Toshiba has started an exciting new frontier for the HDD industry by leading the race to achieve this revolutionary technology, which has been the industry's aim for more than 20 years.

"PMR opens the door to products we haven't even begun to imagine, by removing the technical barriers inherent to packing more data on an HDD. Providing greater storage capacity on mobile disk drives allows Toshiba to give systems OEMs the tools they need for next-generation digital information and entertainment devices."