Laptop computer storage is racing fast towards the 500G-byte level with Fujitsu becoming the third hard-disk drive maker to announce a drive at that capacity.
Fujitsu is accomplishing this capacity by combining three disk platters -- the magnetically-coated disks on which data is stored -- each with a 170G-byte capacity inside the drive. Hitachi, the first company to announce a 500G-byte drive, and Samsung Electronics are also using three platter designs. The third platter increases the thickness of the drive to 12.5 millimeters versus most other laptop drives, which have just two platters and are 9.5 millimeters thick.