Back in 2004, Toshiba was the first to announce a 100gb 2.5″ hard drive. It is now racing with Fujitsu and other hard drive makers to be the first to release a 200gb 2.5″ drive sometime before the end of the year.
According to CNET,
The increase in capacity comes from a couple of different engineering tweaks. The drive combines perpendicular data storage platters. Perpendicular platters store data in vertical columns and thus can hold more data than traditional longitudinal platters.
Additionally, the new drive comes with so-called tunnel magneto-resistive (TMR) recording head technology, rather than the giant magneto-resistive (GMR) recording head technology. To date, Toshiba has released perpendicular drives with GMR heads and longitudinal drives with TMR heads, but not a perpendicular TMR drive.
More, please.
Sources:
Fujitsu Plans 200GB Laptop Hard Drive. PC World, March 27, 2006.
Toshiba touts data density record with new drive. Michael Kanellos, CNET, June 4, 2006.