Hitachi along with Japan's New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) - a public-sector body that promotes research of energy efficient technology, National University Corporation Tokyo Institute of Technology as well as Kyoto University have together developed a new hard drive data recording technology that has promised to increase data density 8-fold.

Together they have developed a new patterning tech for the magnetized bits that are laid on the platters - which are only 10nm in size. This new technology is made possible by using new materials, and also the use of a self-arranged phenomenon of polymer materials.

It's practical applications increases areal-density of disk platters to 3.9 Terabits per square inch (!!!) which is an 8 fold increase compared to the current 500 Gigabit standard. This will let loose 24TB HDD's in the near future.

The tears of many storage whores have just run down their cheeks!