Toshiba Storage Device Division, is now shipping the first hard disk drive that utilizes perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR). The HDD is a tiny 1.8-inch form factor drive with a single 40GB platter. Toshiba also has a 2-platter 80GB version available at this time in the 1.8″ format.

Impressed? You should be. This is a leap forward in disk areal density, and is something that hard disk researchers have been striving towards for some time. PMR hard drives can deliver up to 10 times the storage density of longitudinal hard drives (Longitudinal hard drive technology is limited to 250 Gbit/sq. inch due to the Superparamagnetic effect.

How does this affect video? Well, as I understand it, PMR is less susceptible to disk degradation/corruption. Not that magnetic stability will help much when the hard drive head crashes into the platter(s), but it is an improvement in reliablity. And if you’ve ever lost a project file on a bad disk (inevitably when you are just exporting the completed project) then you will appreciate increased reliability.

And since they are squeezing more data into a smaller space, this makes cameras with tiny, built-in hard drives a lot more feasible, not to mention increased disk capacities in laptops.
And the kicker is, because the data is packed into a physically smaller space, read and write speeds increase. The hard disk head can read and write more data with less physical movement over the surface of the disk. I have read estimates of 1.5x increases in read speeds. So that means that we can now squeeze a little more performance out of pysically smaller, slower-rpm drives, decreasing power requirements and heat issues. This is a Good Thing ™.
And of course, when PMR becomes more prevalent in 3.5 desktop drives, drive capacities will go through the roof. Does a 1-terabyte desktop drive sound good to you? I’ll take two, please…

PMR is a different approach to storage. Here’s how Toshiba describes it: “Conventional longitudinal recording stores data on a magnetic disk as microscopic magnet bits aligned in plane. Although advances in magnetic coatings continue to improve data recording densities on HDD, when the densities become too extreme, the magnetic bits repulse each other due to in-plane alignment. Squeezing more bits on to a disk will eventually reach a point in which crowding degrades recorded bit quality. As such, HDD manufacturers face fast approaching limits on storage capacities. By standing the magnetic bits on end, perpendicular recording reinforces magnetic coupling between neighboring bits, achieving higher and more stable recording densities and improved storage capacity.”

For the (bored) layperson, they have a cute Flash animation that explains things a little more visually, ala-Frank Sinatra.

And Wikipedia has a nice summary on PMR complete with diagrams.

[GeekZone summary]
[Toshiba press release (PDF)]
[Flash animation on PMR]
[Wikipedia on PMR]
[Superparamagnetic effect]