Scientists increase the storage capacity of hard disks while decreasing energy use. Scientists from the University of Sheffield in the UK, St. Polten University of Applied Sciences in Austria, and the Vienna University of Technology are working on increasing the natural limit of the number of basic units of information storage and communication or bits per square inch in hard disks.

The researchers propose storing the data in three-dimensions (3D), providing the need for less hard drives to store the same amount of data and resulting in energy savings.

To do this, the researchers used two or more magnetic layers within a single platter of a hard disk. The different layers can be addressed selectively for writing and reading.

Data is stored in 3D, which offers room for high storage capacities as each layer has a thickness of only a few nanometers. This will mean that movies, pictures, and music will be stored on one drive in the future, rather than relying on adding in external drives.

The results of this international collaboration between the three Universities were published in the internationally highly-ranked Journal of Applied Physics Letters (vol. 29, no. 23, 8 June 2009).