Perpendicular recording involves storing the data bits vertically instead of horizontally, hence increases areal density (more space per platter), promises better dependability and performance, go here for animated info. We’ve seen reviews around the web for the first perpendicular HDD, which is a Notebook HDD, Momentus 5400.3, that manages to beat the rest of the pack which are 7200RPM drives despite being 5400RPM itself. Recent announcement by Seagate concerning the new Cheetah SCSI 15.4k RPM with perpendicular doubled the size of the original cheetah and promises 30% increase over performance. Unfortunately, I don’t see a review yet to prove that point.

So the questions for now are… When are desktop users going to get theirs? At what price? At what size? And the big one is, will it dethrone the king? King Raptor that is. Well, if you know how to read Seagate’s model code, just do this

Go to www.seagate.com and do a search for disc drive, enter “0AS” in the field and click search. All the 7200.10 drives are perpendicular

Hmmm… they removed the links to the product info after AKIBA PC hotline reported it. Here’s direct link to 750GB, 500GB, there’s still 300GB, 250GB and 200GB but the info there are the same, except for the size. Click here to get the PDF document.