TDK Doubles Data Density of Hard Drives

Japan’s TDK Corp. has doubled the recording capacity of hard disk drives using a new type of recording head containing a heating laser. The company plans to begin mass producing the new hard disk drives in late 2012.

TDK’s new technology uses a laser contained inside the magnetic head to heat the disk, thereby increasing its capacity to record data. A 2.5-inch HDD will be able to store 1 terabyte, more than double the current standard 500-gigabytes capacity for that size HDD.

A hard disk drive is a random access digital data storage device in which a magnetic head floats above the platter to read from and write data to a rigid rotating platter.

While lighter, more compact flash memories are used in smartphones and tablet computers, they are about 10 times as expensive as HDD and are not able to match their storage capacity.

TDK has also been boosting the performance of the magnetic head by making it with new materials.