NHK, Sony developing slim, high-capacity 1-in. drive
IDG News Service -
TOKYO - - Japanese public broadcaster Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK), working with Sony Corp., has developed a prototype 1-in. disk drive that is thinner and has more storage capacity than similar drives on the market today, an NHK researcher said this week.
NHK, Sony and the University of Tokyo are developing the slim, high-capacity drives for use in portable devices such as mobile phones, according to Eiichi Miyashita, a senior research engineer at NHK's Science and Technical Research Laboratories (STRL). Mini hard drives are often used in portable music players as well, such as Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod.
The new drives are 2.5 millimeters thick and store 10GB of data. This makes them half the thickness of the 1-in. drives sold by Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Inc. The highest-capacity 1-in. drives currently on sale store 6GB.
A number of Japanese cell phone makers plan to start selling phones in Japan in the first half of next year with tuners to receive digital terrestrial broadcasts. A 10GB-drive would be enough to store about 100 minutes of programming, Miyashita said.
NHK and its partners have so far developed working prototypes of the drives. Miyashita declined to say when the drives are expected to go on sale.
Sony is providing technical support for the disk development, but declined to say whether it has plans to commercialize the technology.
"It's such a small disk technology. ... It's much more like a research and development project," said Sony spokesman David Yang.
Part of the secret behind the high capacity of the disks is the use of a perpendicular recording technology, Miyashita said.
Perpendicular recording is a method of storing information using magnetic fields to represent each bit. In disks that are commercially available today, the bits, or magnetic fields, lay flat on the disk surface. In drives using perpendicular recording, the bits stand vertically, or perpendicular to the disk. Because the bits take less space, more can be packed on the disk.
Several companies have announced that they will sell drives using perpendicular recording technology, including HGST, Toshiba Corp. and Fujitsu Ltd.
NHK and Sony are also developing 0.85-in. disks using perpendicular recording technology, Miyashita said.
Reprinted with permission from
Story copyright 2009 International Data Group. All rights reserved.
Storage
Additional Resources



Learn the important issues you must consider before starting your next mobility initiative. Get your mobility white paper from IDC now, compliments of Sybase.
White Papers & Webcasts
Data Protection is not an insurance policy -you cannot buy-back lost data
Find out why you need to maintain access to critical information to run your business and remain competitive.
Essential Archive Requirements for E-Discovery
Register Now!
Strategic ECM Webinar
Learn what new strategic business benefits can be realized through ECM!
CIO Strategies for the Retention and Deletion of Email
Register Now!
Rethinking Business Continuity and High Availability in Storage - HP and Forrester Pre-Recorded Webcast
Download it.
CIO Viewpoints: Exchange 2007 Risks and Mitigation Strategies
Download This Whitepaper Today!
5 Architecture Issues that Impact BES performance
Register to attend this LIVE Webinar to learn 5 Architecture Issues that Impact BES performance!
The Power/Density Paradox: The Result of High Density without Power Efficiency
Download this brief to explore what the power/density paradox is and how IT professionals can mitigate the risk.
Four Principles for Reducing Storage TCO
View cost reduction strategies in this video! Provided by Hitachi Data Systems.
