Perpendicular hard drives offer more storage density, but what about the performance?

Iria · May 31, 2006, 04:49 AM

Source: Ars Technica
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If there is one axiom that has never faltered during the entire personal computer industry, it is that you can never have too much hard drive space. My first hard drive was a 30 MB model on a Packard-Bell PC/XT, and while it looked like a massive amount of storage at first, I filled it up within a couple of months.

As hard drives pass the 500 GB mark, they are starting to reach a limit on the density that information can be packed on magnetic platters. Specifically, a problem called the superparamagnetic effect starts to become a concern, as ambient heat causes the tiny magnetic particles to "flip their bits" from 0 to 1 or vice versa, damaging data integrity. One solution, which we reported on in January, is to arrange these magnetic particles vertically instead of horizontally on the surface of the platter, allowing greater information density without losing integrity.

May 31, 2006, 04:49 AM	#1
Iria DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Apr 2004 Posts: 7,275 Rep Power: 89	Perpendicular hard drives offer more storage density, but what about the performance? Source: Ars Technica __________ If there is one axiom that has never faltered during the entire personal computer industry, it is that you can never have too much hard drive space. My first hard drive was a 30 MB model on a Packard-Bell PC/XT, and while it looked like a massive amount of storage at first, I filled it up within a couple of months. As hard drives pass the 500 GB mark, they are starting to reach a limit on the density that information can be packed on magnetic platters. Specifically, a problem called the superparamagnetic effect starts to become a concern, as ambient heat causes the tiny magnetic particles to "flip their bits" from 0 to 1 or vice versa, damaging data integrity. One solution, which we reported on in January, is to arrange these magnetic particles vertically instead of horizontally on the surface of the platter, allowing greater information density without losing integrity.