While high density storage is already available, researchers at the National Storage Industry Consortium are working on extremely high density storage.  Its name says it all; it is simply a way to compress the storage of information even more in order to fit more data on a single disk or CD.  Researchers hope to be able to increase the density of the data storage 1 to 2 times and to achieve very high track densities of 100ktpi and above.
    Many major companies and university faculty members are jointly working on the EHDR project.  High density storage has made astonishing progress over the past 40 years, but it is approaching its fundamental barriers.  These barriers include limitations in thermal stability, the switching speed of magnetic domains, and the required proximity of the head-media surfaces.  Those involved in EHDR are looking for new ways to get around these barriers.
    The tracking team is in charge of increasing the servo bandwidth and formatting the disks.  To increase the bandwidth they have come up with two possibilities.  The first is using a piezoelectric microactuator under development by Hutchinson Technology.  The second possibility is even more promising. IBM and the UC Berkley Sensors and Actuators Consortium are developing an electrostatic actuator.  They are still working on the problem of being able to format the disks in an economical and timely manner.

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Last Edited On May 14, 2000