Seagate is now prepared to offer a series of perpendicular recording hard drives to the public. Perpendicular recording improves areal density by re-orienting the data bits so that the north and south poles of the data bits are no longer in a line parallel to the media (longitudinal), but you guessed it, perpendicular to the media’s surface. This re-orientation allows for a higher recording density and eliminates the issues of data stability of concern in longitudinal recording. Basically, we are looking at a four to five fold increase in storage capacity over current longitudinal hard drives.
The future of perpendicular recording hard drives looks to be very interesting, and Seagate is ready to show off their first entry into the market with the release of the Momentus 5400.3 line of drives. Higher capacities, greater shock tolerance, and greater reliability are the key features in my opinion, but as we have seen this new technology offers far more!
