Western Digital claims HDD capacity doubled with nanotech breakthrough

Western Digital has announced what it said is a nanotechnology breakthrough that will allow the company to double data storage capacity on hard disk drives (HDD). The discovery was made by HGST Labs, a company owned by Western Digital (WD), using a technique called nanolithography, which is used to imprint patterns on the thin film of hard drive platters where data is to be stored. The process overcomes the challenges associated with photolithography, a semiconductor technology used for making successively smaller circuit features in shorter wavelengths of light, among other things. The discovery allows for twice the bit density of today's disk drives. Nanolithography was used to make dense patterns of "magnetic islands" that appear as small dots in about 100,000 circular tracks required for disk drives. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here