Hitachi, Ltd. and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, the hard drive arm of the Japanese conglomerate, announced on Monday that they have developed the world's smallest read-head technology for hard disk drives (HDD), in a move that would strengthen its position in the drive market.
Called current perpendicular-to-the-plane giant magnetoresistive (CPP-GMR) heads, Hitachi's new technology is expected to quadruple current storage capacity limits to four terabytes (TB) on a desktop hard drive and one terabyte on a notebook hard drive.
Currently, the top-of-the-line desktop drives come with 1TB storage capacity, which can hold text of approximately 1 million books, 333,000 digital images, 250 hours of high-definition movies, and 1,000 hours of standard-definition video or 250,000 MP3 songs.
Headquartered in San Jose, California-Hitachi GST said its researchers have successfully reduced a key component in hard drives to a nanoscale that would allow the company to continue to increase the density of drives.
Researchers have shrunken the existing recording heads by more than a factor of two to achieve new heads in the 30-nanometer to 50-nanometer range, which is about 2,000 times smaller than the width of an average human hair that ranges from 70 microns to 100 microns.
The two companies said they have co-developed high-output technology and noise-reduction technology for the CPP-GMR head. In order to increase the signal output from the head, they have used a high electron-spin-scattering magnetic film material in the CPP-GMR layer, and also developed a new technology for damage-free fine patterning and noise suppression.
Consequently, the signal-to-noise ratio, a significant factor in determining the performance of a head, was extremely perked up. Heads with track widths of 30 nm to 50 nm have the S/N ratios of 30 decibels (dB) and 40 dB, respectively.
“Hitachi continues to invest in deep research for the advancement of hard disk drives as we believe there is no other technology capable of providing the hard drive’s high-capacity, low-cost value for the foreseeable future,” said Hiroaki Odawara, Research Director, Storage Technology Research Center, Central Research Laboratory, Hitachi, Ltd.
“This is an achievement for consumers as much as it is for Hitachi. It allows Hitachi to fuel the growth of the ‘Terabyte Era’ of storage, which we started, and gives consumers virtually limitless ability for storing their digital content.”
Fifty nanometer track heads will hit the market in 2009, while 30 nm tracks are expected to hit in 2011. Hitachi was due to present the advance in developing next-generation recording heads for hard disk drives at the Perpendicular Magnetic Recording Conference on Monday (Oct.15) in Tokyo.
In January, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies announced the launch of industry's first terabyte (TB) hard drive for desktops, intended to deliver superior performance, reliability and capacity as well.
Demonstrated at 2007 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the 1-Tbyte Deskstar 7K1000 drive uses perpendicular magnetic recording technology to enhance storage capacity and has SATA 2.0Gbps and PATA-133 interfaces plus "ramp load" design to make the drive more power-efficient, Hitachi has said earlier.
With ultra-high storage capacity, the 3.5in, 7200 RPM Parallel-ATA/Serial-ATA hard drive boosts consumers’ ability to store video, photos, music and other valued data to new heights, the company said.
Multi-Terabyte drives from the world’s leading hard-disk drive maker Hitachi come at the time when the people around the world have been connecting digitally. Consumers have entered an era where they can capture everything on digital still or video, and can save those content to listen or share in future. For this purpose, they need ultra large capacity drives and 4TB drives meet such requirements.
Called current perpendicular-to-the-plane giant magnetoresistive (CPP-GMR) heads, Hitachi's new technology is expected to quadruple current storage capacity limits to four terabytes (TB) on a desktop hard drive and one terabyte on a notebook hard drive.
Currently, the top-of-the-line desktop drives come with 1TB storage capacity, which can hold text of approximately 1 million books, 333,000 digital images, 250 hours of high-definition movies, and 1,000 hours of standard-definition video or 250,000 MP3 songs.
Headquartered in San Jose, California-Hitachi GST said its researchers have successfully reduced a key component in hard drives to a nanoscale that would allow the company to continue to increase the density of drives.
Researchers have shrunken the existing recording heads by more than a factor of two to achieve new heads in the 30-nanometer to 50-nanometer range, which is about 2,000 times smaller than the width of an average human hair that ranges from 70 microns to 100 microns.
The two companies said they have co-developed high-output technology and noise-reduction technology for the CPP-GMR head. In order to increase the signal output from the head, they have used a high electron-spin-scattering magnetic film material in the CPP-GMR layer, and also developed a new technology for damage-free fine patterning and noise suppression.
Consequently, the signal-to-noise ratio, a significant factor in determining the performance of a head, was extremely perked up. Heads with track widths of 30 nm to 50 nm have the S/N ratios of 30 decibels (dB) and 40 dB, respectively.
“Hitachi continues to invest in deep research for the advancement of hard disk drives as we believe there is no other technology capable of providing the hard drive’s high-capacity, low-cost value for the foreseeable future,” said Hiroaki Odawara, Research Director, Storage Technology Research Center, Central Research Laboratory, Hitachi, Ltd.
“This is an achievement for consumers as much as it is for Hitachi. It allows Hitachi to fuel the growth of the ‘Terabyte Era’ of storage, which we started, and gives consumers virtually limitless ability for storing their digital content.”
Fifty nanometer track heads will hit the market in 2009, while 30 nm tracks are expected to hit in 2011. Hitachi was due to present the advance in developing next-generation recording heads for hard disk drives at the Perpendicular Magnetic Recording Conference on Monday (Oct.15) in Tokyo.
In January, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies announced the launch of industry's first terabyte (TB) hard drive for desktops, intended to deliver superior performance, reliability and capacity as well.
Demonstrated at 2007 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the 1-Tbyte Deskstar 7K1000 drive uses perpendicular magnetic recording technology to enhance storage capacity and has SATA 2.0Gbps and PATA-133 interfaces plus "ramp load" design to make the drive more power-efficient, Hitachi has said earlier.
With ultra-high storage capacity, the 3.5in, 7200 RPM Parallel-ATA/Serial-ATA hard drive boosts consumers’ ability to store video, photos, music and other valued data to new heights, the company said.
Multi-Terabyte drives from the world’s leading hard-disk drive maker Hitachi come at the time when the people around the world have been connecting digitally. Consumers have entered an era where they can capture everything on digital still or video, and can save those content to listen or share in future. For this purpose, they need ultra large capacity drives and 4TB drives meet such requirements.
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