Hitachi quadruples hard drive capacity

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has developed the world's smallest read-head technology for hard disc drives, which is expected to quadruple current storage capacity limits to four Tbytes on a desktop hard drive and one Tbytes on a notebook hard drive.

Called "current perpendicular-to-the-plane giant magnetoresistive" (CPP-GMR) heads, Hitachi's new technology is expected to be implemented in the first shipped products from 2009, with wider availability from 2011.

Hitachi is presenting its system at the 8th Perpendicular Magnetic Recording Conference (PMRC 2007) in Tokyo this week.

Hitachi GST has developed high-output technology and noise-reduction technology for the CPP-GMR head.

A high electron-spin-scattering magnetic film material was used in the CPP-GMR layer to increase the signal output from the head, and new technology for damage-free fine patterning and noise suppression was developed.

As a result, the signal-to-noise ratio, an important factor in determining the performance of a head, was drastically improved.