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Get Perpendicular

teraera08 · 94.6K views · 2008-07-09 · 3:25

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Overview

A Hitachi promotional cartoon in the style of Schoolhouse Rock explaining perpendicular magnetic recording for hard drives.

On Hacker News

Remembered fondly as a fun, memorable animated explanation of how perpendicular disk storage works.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2011–2026

Topics

Hardware (other)Arts & entertainment (other)
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perpendicular recordinghitachihard drivesanimationschoolhouse rock

What people said

staticshock · 2026-05 · Recommendation

That song is etched into my memory and bring back a flood of great feelings. Daily Motion is giving me a playback error, but here's a copy from youtube: [VIDEO]

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pcurve · 2023-01 · Recommendation

maybe not CS concepts, but wanted to re-share Perpendicular disc storage from Hitachi. [VIDEO] It's a simple concept to explain, but animation sure makes it fun and lasting.

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basch · 2020-04 · Reference

That's what I'm wondering though. Nearly all the WD data center drives are marketed as Ultrastar. Is this marketing, or did the HGST entity supplant WD enterprise during "integration" in the last two years? [LINK] It looks like the only surviving product names are Ultrastar and CinemaStar. Nothing is labeled HGST anymore. Most of the HGST Helium disks were SMR, if I'm not mistaken. As of now, given the two HelioSeal series, one of the two is SMR. Side Note: Hitachi had such a great thing going with their Schoolhouse Rock meets Dino DNA commercial. I wish this would have continued. [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by teraera08, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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