Hitachi hard drive makes firm go nuts in May

HARD DRIVE firm Hitachi GST said a 160HB Travelstar 5K160 2.5-inch drive it announced today is so perpendicular it is "super pendicular".

We tried a search for pendicular on dictionary.com but it suggested the only word close to that is pedicular.

The drive uses perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) tech and is aimed at the notebook market, but it will be used in next generation 1.8-inch drives, ready in the second half of this year.

According to the firm, the PMR write head "can write smaller data bits more sharply". What can this mean? Hitachi explains. "[The] second-generation write head acts like an extremely fine pencil-point capable of writing very sharply-defined data bits that can be packed closely together without distortion."

The read head is made of an indium, manganese, chromium alloy which will bring a two times improvement in field reliability, said Hitachi.

Hitachi GTS has got so excited about the drive technology that it has gone way over the top and describes today's HDD as a "drive of steel".

It has a picture of this "drive of steel". This shows what appears to be a man in a suit wearing a tie who has discovered that instead of having a heart, he has a hard drive where his ticker should be. The picture, uncropped, does not show his head. We can only speculate on what rests on his shoulders. Is it a turnip?

A 160GB "drive of steel" costs $269 and will be available in summer. µ