Thin-film media is the coating found on many hard drive platters and is a replacement for the oxide media used with earlier hard drive platters. Because thin-film media is thinner and smoother than oxide media, the hard disk drive read/write heads can float closer to the platter. By floating closer to the platter, the read/write magnetic field is weaker, which means the tracks can be closer together allowing more data to be stored on the drive.

Hard drive terms, Oxide media

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