Perpendicular recording

[4] Perpendicular recording was later used by Toshiba in 3.5" floppy disks in 1989 to permit 2.88 MB of capacity (ED or extra-high density), but they failed to succeed in the marketplace.

[8] However, the main density advantage comes from the use of a magnetically "stiffer" (higher coercivity) material as the storage medium.

This underlayer can be thought of as part of the write head, completing a magnetic circuit which transects the data storage layer.

[10] Second, the use of a thin 'cap' on the media to control the level of exchange-coupling between grains[11] and to enhance propagation of switching through the thickness of the medium.

Seagate also announced at that time that the majority of its hard disk storage devices would utilize the new technology by the end of 2006.

In April 2006, Seagate began shipping the first 3.5 inch perpendicular recording hard drive, the Cheetah 15K.5, with up to 300GB storage, running at 15,000 rpm and claim to have 30% better performance than their predecessors with a data rate of 73–125 Mbyte/s.

In April 2006, Seagate announced the Barracuda 7200.10, a series of 3.5-inch (89 mm) HDDs utilizing perpendicular recording with a maximum capacity of 750 GB.

Hitachi's first laptop drive (2.5-inch) based on perpendicular recording became available in mid-2006, featuring a maximum capacity of 160 GB.

In July 2006, Western Digital announced volume production of its WD Scorpio 2.5-inch (64 mm) hard drives using WD-designed and manufactured perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology to achieve 80 GB-per-platter density.

In August 2006 Fujitsu extended its 2.5-inch (64 mm) lineup to include SATA models utilizing perpendicular recording, offering up to 160GB capacity.

In December 2006 Toshiba said its new 100GB two-platter HDD is based on perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) and was designed in the "short" 1.8-inch form factor.