3D towers promise to double storage capacity

The team from SPINTEC created these pillars out of bit-patterned media -- separated magnetic nanodots, each of which carries one bit of data. By layering the dots in specific formations, the team created a "multilevel magnetic recording device" with an areal density of two bits per dot -- twice what it started with. According to researcher Jerome Moritz, these findings could provide IT companies with a new way to circumvent physical limitations to their data storage capacities, allowing them to build up and over the vaunted one Tbit per square inch barrier.