Sony Shows off Hybrid Technology

By Greg McNevin

March 7, 2008: Sony is showing off new hybrid technology that it says will increase the storage capacity of traditional magnetic hard drives by five times.

The hybrid tech is not like the hybrid magnetic-flash drives that have been becoming popular of late, but rather a hybrid head. Sony has replace the traditional magnet read/write head with a magnetic/optical head, and in doing so has dramatically increased densities.

Data is written to the disk with a laser, and it is this process and absolute precision. Sony says 125GB can be written per square inch – around five times what is currently possible.

The standout benefit of the new tech is the increasingly popular notebook segment, where drive capacity is quite limited compared to desktop machines.

The only current catch is that while Sony has developed the tech, it has no plans to manufacture its own drives. Sony says it will be working with other hard drive manufacturers to bring the technology to market.

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