
Toshiba has announced today a storage technology breakthrough that could, in the near future, have our computers loaded up with 10 TB hard drives. Through the use of a new storage technique known as bit-pattern recording, Toshiba has made a prototype hard drive that packs an areal density of 2.5 Tb per square inch – roughly five times more than existing Toshiba hard drives.
Through bit-pattern recording, a hard drive can now utilize only a few magnetic grains per bit rather than hundreds as used in the old uniform magnetic coating system. These magnetic bits are then organized into rows to make it easier for the hard drive to locate data and the result is a huge amount of data per HDD platter that allows a three-platter, 10 TB hard drive by an estimated 2013.
Not only has Toshiba created a 2.5 Tb per square inch prototype, they also have begun work on doubling that density to around 5 Tb per square inch. Again, this leads to bigger hard drives and more TBs per platter.












