Hitachi has announced that recent advances in perpendicular recording, essentially allowing data to be stored in three dimensional space, will allow them to increase data storage per square inch up to 230 gigabits. They will be able to fit 20GB into a 1-inch microdrive and a terabyte into a 3.5-inch drive.
It will take some time to incorporate the new technology into future drives. Hitachi plans to begin rolling out drives with “only 130 gigabits to 150 gigabits per square inch” at first and increase the capacity per-inch to the 230 gigabit capacity by 2007.
Competitors such as Seagate and Toshiba are also working on perpendicular-recording drives.