Toshiba Working on HD with Larger Capacity

Perpendicular recording technology allowed a breakthrough in HD storage space by massively increasing capacity of our HDs. Thanks to this technology we can today have a 1.8" HD featuring 160GB of storage space, finding its way in an iPod, while the first iPod had 5GB capacity... This is also true for 3.5" HDs now available with capacity reaching 1TB.
Toshiba announced to have manufactured a 1.8" HD prototype based on a single platter of 120GB (vs. 80Gb currently) thanks to a new technology known as Discrete Track Recording (DTR). The DTR is expected to boost area density of a perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) by up to 50%, by forming a groove between the tracks on the PMR support. By reducing the signal interference between adjacent data PMR tracks, DTR will shorten the tracks, and as a consequence increase recording density and improve signal/noise ratio

Toshiba expect to launch mass production of DTR-enable HDs from 2009, and first drives to benefit from this new technology will be 1.8" and 2.5" HDs.