Like a closet stuffed with things you can't bear to part with -- the disk drive, someday, was bound to run out of space.

The "superparamagnetic limit" is what industry insiders call it -- the digital brick wall where a disk drive can fit no more tiny bits of data onto its surface.

Seagate Technology, the disk drive maker with a research operation in the Strip District, this week offered a solution to the quagmire -- saving data vertically, rather than horizontally on a disk drive.

The method -- known as perpendicular recording, allows the Scotts Valley, Calif.-based Seagate and other disk drives makers to boost the density of drives without the risk of damaging the data.

The technology, which analysts are labeling the future of data storage, was on its way to being brushed aside when local operation chief Mark Kryder suggested that his team of about 35 researchers tackle it in 1999.

Perpendicular recording, said Mr. Kryder, had been around since the 1970s. But many companies were opting to drop it as a potential solution to the memory storage dilemma.

Mr. Kryder, a former Carnegie Mellon University professor who had been recruited by Seagate a year before to head up its local research and development facility, was convinced that perpendicular recording had a future, buttressed by work that he and CMU colleague Stan Charap had been doing. So he forged ahead to solve the storage puzzle.

"We knew there was a limit and we were seeking a solution to it," said Mr. Kryder. "Time to market means everything."

By 2002, Mr. Kryder and his research team, that now numbers around 150, were ready to hand off the technology to the company for further development.

Seagate wasn't the first to embrace perpendicular recording. Japanese-maker Toshiba has been making a slightly smaller version of the perpendicular disk drive since last year.

But Seagate is the first disk drive maker firm to switch all of its disk drives to saving data vertically, according to San Jose-based iSuppli analyst Krishna Chander.

The new disk drives should pop up in the laptops of some of Seagate's biggest customers, including Dell and Hewlett-Packard, by year-end, said a company spokeswoman.

For now, the computer makers are trying out the new disk drives in their products. "[They] go through stringent quality control and testing -- to make sure it stands the test of good quality and technology," said Mr. Chander.

Today's average laptop boasts about 30 to 80 gigabytes of disk drive space. Higher-end versions offer even more storage -- up to 160 gigabytes -- but those disk drives tend to be a lot larger because more memory tends to mean more space. And in the world of electronics, smaller is usually better.

With the new perpendicular format, Seagate is hoping to stuff more data into less space -- ultimately using its 2¹/₂ inch disk drive to store 160 gigabytes of memory while using less energy and lowering the cost to make them.

But don't expect this new technology to affect your pocketbook when buying MP3 players, digital video recorders and or a Seagate disk drive-carrying XBox 360. Mr. Chander said consumers probably won't see the difference on price tags of their electronics.

"This doesn't mean that prices will go down more rapidly," he said. While the overall price of disk drives drop about 7 percent a year -- the other bells and whistles loaded onto electronic devices are sure to keep the retail price pretty steady.