WSJ writes:
Toshiba Corp. said it expects in August to begin shipping a drive that can store 178.8 gigabits of data a square inch — a gigabit equals one billion bits — compared with 133 gigabits for current products by Seagate and others. Hitachi Global Storage Technologies last year said it has achieved storage densities of 230 gigabits a square inch, though products based on that technology aren’t expected until 2007.
The latest achievements are made possible by a technology called perpendicular recording, which arranges bits vertically, rather than horizontally, to fit more on a disk. The technique has increased the rate of capacity improvements by drive makers, which face competition from flash-memory chip technology that is more shock-resistant than disk storage but also more expensive.
