Achievement Underscores Strong Advancement and Future for Hard Disc Drive
Storage
SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif., Sept. 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Seagate
Technology (NYSE: STX) today announced the results of a magnetic recording
demonstration, setting a world record of 421 Gbits per square inch (421
Gbit/in2). The demonstration used perpendicular recording heads and media
created with currently available production equipment that validates
Seagate's ability to scale the technology for the foreseeable future
without major technology changes or capital additions. Dr. Mark Kryder of
Seagate unveiled the findings during his keynote presentation at the IDEMA
DISKCON show in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the hard drive.
The demonstration is evidence of the continued momentum in disc drive
innovation, and reaffirms the disc drive as the undisputed king of storage
when capacity and cost-effectiveness are both required. At the demonstrated
density level, Seagate expects the capacity ranges to result in solutions
ranging in 40GB to 275GB for 1-and 1.8-inch consumer electronics drives,
500GB for 2.5-inch notebook drives, and nearly 2.5TB for 3.5-inch desktop
and enterprise class drives. At 2.5TB capacity, a hard drive would be
capable of storing 41,650 hours of music, 800,000 digital photographs,
4,000 hours of digital video or 1,250 video games. Seagate anticipates that
solutions at these density levels could begin to emerge in 2009.
"Today's demonstration, combined with recent technology announcements
from fellow hard drive companies, clearly shows that the future of hard
drives is stronger than ever," said Bill Watkins, CEO of Seagate.
"Breakthroughs in areal density are enabling the digital revolution and
clearly indicate that hard drives can sustain their advantage to meet the
world's insatiable demand for storage across a wide range of market
segments."
The Future Ahead from the World's #1 Disc Drive Manufacturer
Seagate's leadership in R&D and manufacturing has enabled the Company
to consistently deliver its award-winning products first to the market. As
the company with the broadest range of products using perpendicular
recording, no other company is better positioned to serve the storage needs
of the future than Seagate.
Seagate continues to invest its resources in research to serve the
needs of the storage market and sees a strong future in disc drive
development. During Dr. Kryder's DISKCON keynote, he explained future
technologies designed to extend magnetic recording beyond perpendicular
including Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) and bit patterned media
techniques. Using these recording methods, Seagate researchers have
estimated capacities to reach or exceed 50 terabits per square inch.
Demonstration Technical Details
The areal density of 421 Gbpsi was demonstrated using 10 E-3 off-track
bit error rate criteria with 5% squeeze and meeting a 10% off-track
capability at a data rate of 735 megabits per second. The track density was
275,000 tracks per inch, and the linear density was 1.53 million bits per
inch for a bit aspect ratio of 5.6. The demonstration was conducted using a
product channel, perpendicular head, and thermally stable media created
with current production equipment.
About Seagate
Seagate is the worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and
marketing of hard disc drives, providing products for a wide-range of
applications, including Enterprise, Desktop, Mobile Computing, Consumer
Electronics and Branded Solutions. Seagate's business model leverages
technology leadership and world-class manufacturing to deliver
industry-leading innovation and quality to its global customers, and to be
the low cost producer in all markets in which it participates. The company
is committed to providing award-winning products, customer support and
reliability to meet the world's growing demand for information storage.
Seagate can be found around the globe and at http://www.seagate.com.
NOTE: Seagate, Seagate Technology and the Wave logo are registered
trademarks of Seagate Technology LLC. All other trademarks or registered
trademarks are the property of their respective owners. One gigabyte, or
GB, equals one billion bytes when referring to hard drive capacity. One
terabyte, or TB, equals 1,000 gigabytes when referring to hard drive
capacity. Accessible capacity may vary depending on operating environment
and formatting. Quantitative usage examples for various applications are
for illustrative purposes. Actual quantities will vary based on various
factors, including file size, file format, features and application
software.
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