Terabyte hard drive for laptops

Fujitsu has developed a hard disk manufacturing technology that will cram 1.2 Terabytes (TB) of data – or 1,200GB – on to a standard laptop drive.

Average laptop hard drives currently on sale have capacities of around 160GB. Even today's high-end laptops have drives of 250GB capacity, a fifth the size of the drive Fujitsu is proposing.

The achievement involves an improvement in hard disk platter design first reported in January, which can yield a storage density of 1TB/sq in using one-dimensionally aligned alumina nano-hole patterns with 25nm pitch.

Now, Fujitsu has successfully created ideally 'ordered' alumina nano-hole patterns for isolated bit-by-bit recording on a large disk area by establishing an innovative fabrication process, and confirming the basic read/write capability in each individual nano-hole of the patterned media using a flying head on a rotating disk.

Using perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) processes, the patterned alumina nano-hole media was fabricated using nano-imprint lithography, anodic oxidation, and cobalt electro-deposition at a nano-hole density of 100nm pitch – suitable for reading by currently available head technology.

Applied to a standard 2.5in, two-platter laptop hard drive, the 1TB/sq in fabrication process would provide a drive of 1.2TB capacity.

"We expect this breakthrough to provide revolutionary changes for various IT and consumer applications,” said David James, vice president of advanced product engineering at Fujitsu Computer Products of America.

The work on nano-hole patterned media was developed in Fujitsu's laboratories and the Kanagawa Academy of Science and Technology (KAST) and funded by the Research Programme on Development of Innovative Technology of the Japan Science and Technology Agency. A detailed write-up has been published in Applied Physics Letters.