Showa Denko K.K. (SDK) said it will start commercial production of 2.5-inch hard disk (HD) media with storage capacity of 100Gbytes per disk in Q3 of this year, using perpendicular magnetic recording technology.

The new 2.5-inch HD media will be used mainly in notebook PCs. An HDD containing two SDK disks will have a total capacity of 200Gbytes.

The disks will have recording density of 178.8Gbits per square inch. In June 2005, SDK began using the perpendicular magnetic recording technology on a commercial scale when it started production of 1.89-inch HD media based on the technology.

Demand for HD media is growing rapidly for such consumer electronics applications as HDD recorders and mobile music players. Furthermore, there is an increasing demand for notebook PCs with large-capacity HDDs to enable the storage and editing of pictures recorded from TV programs or taken with video cameras.

- Marty Gold
eeProductCenter