Bigger, badder hard drives on the way from Toshiba

Toshiba has announced the creation of a new 2.5” laptop hard drive holding a staggering 200GB with just two platters.

The drive is planned for release this August. Interestingly the drive only runs 4200RPM, which is 1200RPM slower than standard laptop drives, which will hopefully lead to lower power consumption and less heat output, great for a longer battery life in laptops.

The announcement could also pave way for much higher capacity 3.5” drives later in the year. Seagate has already released a 750GB drive and it will not be long before 1TB is reached.

The new drive uses a new perpendicular magnetic recording technology, since standard linear drives are fast running out of space to cram data into. Perpendicular storage media should give more space, as the drives use vertical storage as well as horizontal.

Although perpendicular storage has been around since 1976 it wasn’t until recently that it was put to use commercially. Whilst linear drives can hold a theoretical 200Gbits a square inch, perpendicular drives have been predicted to hold up to 1000Gbits, so the quest to create the densest linear drive is not complete (as Toshiba has only managed 178.8Gbits/sqinch on this drive).

If you wish to do some more reading on perpendicular storage drives you can pop over to the ever so useful Wikipedia page.

Once we see linear density maxed out we will be seeing much bigger drives in 2007, so roll on smaller home servers! What's your thoughts on the tech? Let us know over in the forums!