Approaches to 10 Gbit/in(2) recording

The areal density of manufactured magnetic disk drives is currently advancing at a rate of about 60% per year. Assuming this continues, an areal density of 10 Gbit/in.(2) will be reached sometime shortly after year 2000. In this paper, the characteristics of a disk drive with 10 Gbit/in.(2) density and the requirements that such an areal density places upon the component technologies necessary to make such a drive possible are discussed. It is projected that smooth, high coercivity and fine grain media, high moment thin film write heads, spin-valve read heads, advanced signal processing techniques, and improved servo systems will make it possible to achieve this goal using flying heads and longitudinal recording. (C) 1996 American Institute of Physics.