The hard drive maker Hitachi has developed together with several Japanese research institutions a new technology that increases the current density of HDDs by eight times, which could be made in future hard drives with 24 terabytes.

It is developed by the Japanese researchers used technology, which utilizes the phenomenon of self-assembly of polymers. This magnetic structures with a size of only 10 nm allows the data slices of hard drives. The storage density of magnetic disks should thus be increased to 3.9 terabytes per square inch. Compared to the current standard of 500 gigabytes per square inch, this corresponds to a narrow eight times the storage density.

The research consortium that developed the new technology, including Hitachi, the Japanese NEDO research organization, the National University Corporation Tokyo Institute of Technology and Kyoto University.