Hard disk is the important storage device of computer. It cannot be replaced by a semiconductor storage device like a semiconductor memory such as the pen drives that we use today. This is because the dynamic locating of memory on semiconductor is not possible. Sequential memory allocation is the only possible way to access semiconductor memory. But in case of a magnetical storage device like hard disk it can be accessed dynamically by moving the read/write head to the corresponding position. But one problem seriously affecting the magnetical storage devices is that the data storing capacity cannot be made so large. Researches for developing larger sized hard disks are going on different multinational industries like IBM, Motorola etc.

I am going to tell about one outcome of these researches made by IBM. This new technology can be named as Pixel Dust. In the last five years hard disk capacity has been doubled by the use of double layered disks. But according to the IBM this new technology will push back that limit. IBM is planning to revolutionize the hard disk production by the use of this new technology. For users this new data density will give a transition of home entertainment from analog to the digital interactive formats.

When telling about the new technology it is a modification of the hard disk material that we use for data storage. The new material called the ruthenium is used for this purpose. This metal is precious like platinum. This metal will be sandwiched between two magnetic layers. This new material is expected to store data of about one million bits per square inch of the disk. That means 100 GB of data can be stored in one square inch. Current hard disk is capable of storing about 20 GB of data per square inch. This new method will quadruple the storage capacity.
Technically this anti ferromagnetically coupled (AFC) or pixel dust technology will be powering the hard disk in the future. The advantage of using this type of hard disks is that it can handle large amount of data with less power. As the size of drives increases the problem affecting the data read and write is that it can corrupt the data present in the drives. In order to avoid this Super paramagnetic (SPE) effect has to be used. Also these will enables faster data read and write in the hard disks. Another advantage of using this AFC media for data storage is that the life AFC media is more than current hard disks that we use now.