In case you haven’t heard, earlier this week NetApp formally announced the availability of 750GB SATA disk drives for selected FAS storage systems (part number X268A-R5, in case keeping score ;-).
What’s really neat here is the fact that instead of recording the bits horizontally – with the (traditional) longitudinal technology -- they’re being recorded perpendicular (bits are aligned vertically). This means when all the little bits lie down (as they should under longitudinal drives), they’re going to get pretty cramped and eventually do flips (otherwise known as the Superparamagnetic effect).
Of course, perpendicular recording is just the tip of the iceberg -- research into patterned media, new read/write heads, inventing more advanced algorithms to interpret magnetic signals is just a few of the many ways to further advance the ever-evolving hard disk drive.
Here’s my prediction: 1-terabyte (TB) SATA drives before the end of this decade!!
