Hitachi plans 4TB hard drives
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies could soon offer users 4-terabyte desktop drives. Rotating hard drives will remain the best choice for high density storage in the foreseeable future, thanks to new read/write head technology.
Hitachi said it has developed these new read/write heads that are about 30-50nm in size. Known as current perpendicular-to-the-plane giant magnetoresistive (CPP-GMR), the technology is expected to appear in shipping products by 2009.
According to Hitachi, CPP-GMR heads will enable hard disk recording densities of 500 gigabits per square inch. This is approximately four times as high as current technology used in the company’s first one terabyte drive, unveiled earlier this year. A terabyte is approximately one thousand gigabytes.
