How Scientists Let You Cram Terabytes Of Data In A 3.5-inch Hard Drive

We visited Seagate Technologies’ hard drive platter manufacturing facilities in Singapore to find out the techniques deployed to continuously increase storage capacities of their hard drives

- Anil Chopra

According to Seagate Technologies, if they were to stack up all the storage media that they have produced so far, then it would attain a height of 950 meters. Doesn’t sound like much? How about if we told you that that’s 122 meters higher than the tallest building in the world–Dubai’s Burj Khalifa? While the Burj Khalifa has a height of 828 meters, Seagate’s media would stack up to a height of 950 meters. Now that’s something!

But this is just an interesting fact, which may not matter much to ordinary people or even storage experts who store their memories and critical data on hard drives purchased off the shelf for a few thousand bucks. But you’d be amazed if you discovered just how these storage devices are actually manufactured. At least we most certainly were when we visited Seagate Technologies’ hard drive platter manufacturing, integration, and testing facilities in Singapore. The process is nothing short of amazing.

For one, to create such a storage wonder, and to continuously increase its capacity by leaps and bounds every year, requires a lot of research by hundreds of scientists from so many different streams like chemistry, physics, process technology, fluid mechanics, and aerodynamics.