Get Perpendicular

The first computer I worked on had no hard-drive at all, just wobbly floppy disks. Later, I guess it was on a 80286, we had our first hard drive with a nearly infinite storage of 20 MB. Year after year hard-drive capacities got bigger and bigger and the actual drives got smaller and smaller. Just compare those 5 ½”–douple height drives with 20 MB and current iPod disks with 1.8” and 160 Gigs.

Have you ever asked yourself how this is possible. How can more and more bits be stored on modern hard-drives?

Well, one recent innovation is Perpendicular Recording. Basically the orientation of the magnetic field for storing a bit is rotated, as the old way, storing bits longitudinally, needs more space than storing them vertically (or perpendicular). That allows storage capacity to increase tenfold and data throughput is increased, too.

Didn’t get it yet? Luckily Hitachi has created a nice education/promotion video for you:
Get Perpendicular

Thanks Lutz.