Seagate, the most important player on the conventional HDD market, presented its latest technologies at IDEMA DISKON show in Santa Clara, California. The star of the show was a magnetic recording device with an outstanding density of 421 Gbits per square inch. The current available densities range from 135 Gbits per square inch, which is included in the recent Seagate 160 GB 5400.3 2.5-inch perpendicular notebook drives, to 188 Gbits per square inch densities which can be found in the upcoming Toshiba 2.5-inch drives.

A recent press release put out by Seagate presents how the future 421 Gbit density would boost up storage capacities. Thus, the new technology could result into 275 GB HDDs. The future 2.5-inch laptop drives would level out at 500 GB, while 3.5-inch desktop drives would be able to store as much as 2.5 TB. Seagate claims that these outstanding capacities will be introduced by 2009.

Seagate is not racing on its own. Hitachi, another important HDD producer, announced holographic drives that can store up to 1 TB by the end of 2006. Both companies use Komag as primary supplier for their high density platters and Seagate might release 1TB HDDs as soon as early 2007.