14 DAY TRIAL // TDK Corp has recently announced that it has achieved the world's highest surface recording density of HDD, 803Gbit/inch2 with a track recording density of 1.771kBPI and a track density of 454kTPI. The announcement comes after Toshiba introduced last week its first 250GB 1.8-inch HDDs, designed to meet the specifications and requirements of today's portable computer systems.
In terms of capacity, TDK's latest achievement can enable storage manufactures to develop a single 1.8-inch double-sided disk with a maximum of about 260GB storage space. Although it's unlikely that any company will reveal a 260GB 1.8-inch HDD, TDK could soon join Toshiba in offering the biggest capacity 1.8-inch HDDs on the market. These could also revolutionize computer storage, especially when it comes to small-sized, portable computer systems such as netbooks, or even to fully-fledged notebooks.
The company uses an existing TMR head, which was announced back in 2007, and a discrete track of medium, developed by TDK based on a perpendicular magnetic recording HDD of Showa Denko K K. To achieve the enhanced surface recording density, TDK increased the magnetoresistance ratio by more than 80%, while keeping the bond resistance of the reproducing head's TMR element low.
“We got a feeling that we will be able to achieve up to 1Tbit/inch2 with TMR elements,” said Katsumichi Tagami, director of the SQ Research Center, TDK Technology Group.
The company hasn't yet specified a date for when it will use the newly announced technology to develop an ultra-small, high-capacity drive for portable computer systems and other electronic devices. However, it looks like Toshiba could soon get a new competitor in the high-capacity 1.8-inch HDD market segment.
TDK's announcement also confirms the fact that storage manufactures are still considering HDDs as the primary storage solution for current computer systems, despite the increasing popularity and technology advances in SSD technology.