Seagate Boosts Data Density

September 18th, 2006: In a new world record, Seagate has packed 421 Gbits per square inch onto magnetic media, dramatically increasing storage capacities for magnetic drives.

Using perpendicular recording technology, the company demonstrated this new storage feat using production equipment that is currently available.

Seagate expects this new technology to substantially improve drive capacity, saying that 1-and 1.8-inch consumer electronics drives could be blown out to 40GB and 275GB, 500GB for 2.5-inch notebook drives, and nearly 2.5TB for 3.5-inch desktop and enterprise class drives.

Seagate says that at 2.5TB, a hard drive would be capable of storing 41,650 hours of music, 800,000 digital photographs, 4,000 hours of digital video or 1,250 video games. It anticipates that solutions at these density levels could begin to emerge in 2009.

“Today's demonstration, combined with recent technology announcements from fellow hard drive companies, clearly shows that the future of hard drives is stronger than ever,” says Bill Watkins, CEO of Seagate. “Breakthroughs in areal density are enabling the digital revolution and clearly indicate that hard drives can sustain their advantage to meet the world's insatiable demand for storage across a wide range of market segments.”

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