THE ROLE OF PERPENDICULAR RECORDING IN THE FUTURE OF HARD DISK STORAGE

20 years of enthusiastic development have been insufficient to make perpendicular recording successful in the HDD marketplace. An examination is made of the attributes that make it unattractive at current areal densities. Those attributes are reexamined in the light of the coming superparamagnetic limit for storage media. A challenge is issued to the supporters of perpendicular recording, that they perform a technology demonstration under a particular set of rules for success. This is considered essential if perpendicular recording is to be seriously considered as a candidate to replace longitudinal recording within the next ten years.