Diamond-like carbon (DLC) is presently used as a smooth, protective coating on disks, heads and sliders used in magnetic disk storage technology. The rapidly increasing storage density of magnetic thin film media will soon require carbon overcoats of only 2-nm thickness. The carbon overcoats are presently made by magnetron sputtering, but this method is unlikely to be able to provide the continuous, ultra-thin coatings required in future. This paper describes methods to produce thinner coatings such as high plasma density plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) methods and the filtered cathodic vacuum are (FCVA). Characterisation methods such as Raman are also described.