Nothing gets our hearts racing like advancements in storage technology, so we’re pretty giddy that the current 80GB-per-platter ceiling on 2.5-inch hard drives may soon get a boost, with 200GB drives possibly available before the end of the year. Japan’s ALPS Technologies has claimed that it will present a new type of thin-film recording head at a private trade conference this May — called TuMR — that will enable perpendicular hard disc drive recording at an unparalleled 170 GB/in2 , compared to the paltry 132 GB/in2 that Seagate is able to muster today. Hitachi had previously announced a technology capable of 230 GB/in2 , but so far hasn’t produced the goods, so ALPS (and also Western Digital, it would seem, for whom they supply parts) has a golden opportunity to step up and take the coveted density crown.