The EETimes is reporting on moves by the disk drive industry to improve data capacity on hard disks by radically changing the way the data is stored on the drive platters.

‘As opposed to longitudinal recording, where the bits are impressed in a parallel format along the surface of a disc, perpendicular recording stands the bits on end, enabling more data storage per square inch.’

It’s tricky, has reliability issues and is a few years away, but eventually the new technology should yield the kind of terrabyte capacities that we’re gonna need in order to store all our on-demand movies in the future. [via slashdot]