Japanese consumer electronics giant Sony Corp and major chemical maker Nippon Zeon Company have joined forces to develop a synthetic resin hard disk substrate which they claim is an industry first. Production costs for synthetic resin substrates would be 30% to 40% lower than for conventional aluminium substrates, according to a Sony statement which said the companies plan to work with US hard disk equipment maker Castlewood Systems Inc to start commercial production of a drive using the synthetic substrate this year.
The disk will have a storage capacity of about 5GB, on a par with conventional drives using aluminium substrates, according to Sony and will initially be marketed for use in PCs. However the aim is to eventually sell it as a key component in home services which will control the operation of intelligent audio/visual appliances, the statement said. About 45 million hard disk substrates are shipped worldwide each month, 40 million of them aluminium and the rest made from glass substrates.
