2007.05.20: Perpendicular recording for hard drives

Leanna's 3year old Fujitsu convertible tablet PC's hard drive recently started showing symptoms of imminent failure so she requested that I order her a new hard drive. Her current hard drive is an older Toshiba 4200RPM 2.5" 40gigabyte hard drive. Her new drive will be one of the newer Seagate Momentus 5400.3 120gig HD's. I was hoping to find a quantitative comparison from a database of tests including her old drive and one of the 5400.3's but I came upon something a lot more interesting. In a highly-positive review of the 5400.3, I found a link to Hitachi's animation explaining perpendicular recording which is employed in Seagate HD's as well. I found the animation entertaining and educational and the amusement value of this musical animation is something even non-geeks can appreciate.