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Toshiba 40GB Perpendicular Magnetic Record Drives
freitasm writes "Toshiba is now shipping a 40GB 1.8" hard disk, the first in the industry based on the PMR (Perpendicular Magnetic Recording) technology. The disk stores 40GB in a single platter, and there are plans to release a 80GB version later this year. The first models are already being used on Toshiba's new Gigabeat MP3 players." It's all part of their plan to squeeze more bits onto the head of a pin.
Even though the following is from Hitachi, it is still entertaining (and maybe we can bring down their server too...)
Get Perpendicular!
There is a great flash video that explains perpendicular recording, with music no less, at http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/research/recording_h ead/pr/PerpendicularAnimation.html
produced by Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, for the curious as to how it actually works.
40Gb may be common in desktop computers, However a 1.8" drive is NOT common in desktop computers.
DSLIP Web Design and Content Management Australia.
Anyone know what the performance of these "perpendicular" drives will be like compared to today's accepted methods?
The MK4007GAL HDD 1.8-inch HDD packs 40GB on a single platter - the largest single-platter capacity yet achieved in the 1.8-inch form factor. This breakthrough technology sets new benchmarks for data density with the highest areal density currently on the market at 206 megabits per square millimeter (133 gigabits per square inch). The 1.8-inch PMR HDD is now shipping in Toshiba's new Gigabeat F41, enabling the MP3 player to store up to 10,000 songs.
"Toshiba has started an exciting new frontier for the HDD industry by leading the race to achieve this revolutionary technology, which has been the industry's aim for more than 20 years," said Scott Maccabe, vice president, Toshiba Storage Device Division. "PMR opens the door to products we haven't even begun to imagine, by removing the technical barriers inherent to packing more data on an HDD. Providing greater storage capacity on mobile disk drives allows Toshiba to give system OEMs the tools they need for next-generation digital information and entertainment devices."
Toshiba recently announced acquisition of a design center in Fremont, Calif., to help U.S.-based engineers and OEMs create new products using platforms such as PMR to span beyond the limits of today's conventional digital products. The 1.8-inch HDD form factor has been a critical component for consumer electronics products from MP3 players to handheld GPS systems and ultra-portable PCs. To date, Toshiba has shipped more than 14 million 1.8-inch HDDs since its introduction in mid-2000. The addition of PMR technology will increase capacity options for product designs beyond those currently on the market today, especially as Toshiba introduces an 80GB 1.8-inch HDD with PMR later this year.
PMR: The Technology Achievement
Toshiba is the first company in the storage industry to commercialize PMR, providing unsurpassed recording density and high operating reliability on its 1.8-inch HDD platform. The technology is based on a new magnetic disk structured to support perpendicular recording, a new high-performance perpendicular magnetic head, and disk and head integration technology that maximizes their combined performance.
Conventional longitudinal recording stores data on a magnetic disk as microscopic magnet bits aligned in plane. Although advances in magnetic coatings continue to improve data recording densities on HDD, when the densities become too extreme, the magnetic bits repulse each other due to in-plane alignment. Squeezing more bits on to a disk will eventually reach a point in which crowding degrades recorded bit quality. As such, HDD manufacturers face fast-approaching limits on storage capacities.
By standing the magnetic bits on end, perpendicular recording reinforces magnetic coupling between neighboring bits, achieving higher and more stable recording densities and improved storage capacity.
Yep, it's coming out 2007 May 05. As you know, we Slashdotters are privy to all manner of corporate secrets. Also, we can predict the future. I am sorry that you have not yet discovered these abilities. It is likely that your 800k uid inhibits them somewhat.
I'm thinking that laptop raid would be an excellent use for these. Maybe after some power and space tweaking, a single Raid 5 cartridge could be made in place of the normal hard drive. Since high performance laptops buyers don't seem to mind a little extra bulk/weight, a laptop made to accomodate such a setup might be well accepted by hardware lovers.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
99% of people don't care about the recording method. All they care about are things like price, size, performance, and other characteristics like noise, heat, etc.
Give me small, dense, long-lasting, zillions of read/write cycles, low heat/energy, fast, compatible with existing equipment or cheap adapter card, etc. etc. and I won't care if it's flat, perpendicular, or shaped like a three-dimensional pretzel, er, I mean a protien.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The ThinkPad X-series uses 1.8" drives to cut down on weight and size.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
In fact, it would almost certainly cost more if they tried to make a hard drive that had exactly 8 MB of space and no more because the parts for it are no longer mass produced. The easiest way would be to make a 40 GB hard drive and seal off everything after the first 8 MB. Of course who in the hell wants a 8 MB hard drive anyhow?
If you're an Apple person, then you're already likely seeing 120 GB drives as standard if you own an iMac or one of their other top tier computers. The same is probably true if you buy a gaming rig from Alienware or some other company that specializes in high performance computers.
As technology progresses to the point where it's easy and cheap to cram 120 GB into a hard drive then they will become more standard as we pave way towards bigger and bigger drives. Do most people really need 120 GB hard drive? Not really, in my opinion, but it'll be nice for the Google's of the world who want to give us 2 GB of inbox space.
Of course, people will continue to become more tech savvy and start to put more digital photographs and eventually videos on their computers. 40 GB can hold a lot of pictures, but 120 GB is better suited for having a lot of video content stored on your hard drive.
In 10 years we'll likely be measuring drive sizes in TB instead of GB, laughing about the days when computers only came with 40 GB HDs and single core processors, kind of like how we laugh about how computers from the 80's had HDs that measured in MBs and RAM that measued in KB!
I found this book earlier in the year.
It's pretty much the Bible for perpendicular magnetic.
Gets really in-depth.
Perpendicular Magnetic Recording
by Sakhrat Khizroev, Dmitri Litvinov
Ignorance is amusing, stupidity is annoying.
And every byte [of the 120 MB hard drive in a music player] is in legal, bought-and-paid-for music, right?
"Legal"? Remember that a CD in FLAC or Apple Lossless format is about 0.3 GB. It's not unheard of for somebody who's been collecting CDs since 1985 to own 400 CDs, especially if the collector has been hitting the pawn shops, garage sales, thrift stores, and half.com. Do the math. And as for "bought-and-paid-for", you're referring to the legislators who work on copyright law, right?
What's important is that these drives are single platter 1.8" drives. 40GB and 60GB 1.8" drives have been around for a while but they're double platter and are about 9mm high.
These drives would be great upgrades to tablets like the NEC Litepad.
It is posible to make an educated guess on this.
The density of transistors has been doubling about every 18 months since 1997, in the storage industry, density has been doubling every 12 months.
So,
8/05 - 400 GB - which is close to the largest 3.5" drives you can get at the moment
8/06 - 800 GB
8/07 - 1600 GB
So you could, quite reasonably, estmate that 1 TB 3.5" drives will be around early 2007.
Western Digital still makes 8GB drives for XBOX. These are really 20GB platters that have been short stroked to 8GB since microsoft wants uniformity. In reality these are 80GB platters that didn't make it. Western Digital doesn't produce any drives with less than 80GB platters now. All the 80GBs that you find commonly in Dells are single platter.
Of course, people will continue to become more tech savvy and start to put more digital photographs and eventually videos on their computers. 40 GB can hold a lot of pictures, but 120 GB is better suited for having a lot of video content stored on your hard drive.
You're missing the market for these. One hour of recording high-definition television is approximately 10 GB of data. A 300 GB drive only gets you 30 hours of recorded television. I really believe that we're going to be moving towards a stronger split in computer systems, with some marketed as entertainment hubs (in whatever form) and others marketed for utility. In that world, 100 hours of high-def home videos consumes a TB.
We'll want bigger hard drives.
Correct me if I am wrong....
but didn't the short-lived 2.88Mb 3.5" floppies use perpendicular recording?
(For those too young to remember, in the 1990s, IBM shipped many of their PS/2 machines with 2.88 floppy drives - unfortunately the media was too expensive, more expensive than 2 standard "High Density" 1.44 diskettes - the drives were very expensive, the heads had to support the perpendicular recording mode as well as standard - also IIRC standard controllers and BIOS couldn't support the higher capacity drives. IBM even tried to boost awareness of the newer format by imprinting a tiny "2.88" on to the blue eject buttons)
-- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
-- Except on one where stupidity was there first.