Seagate is breaking through previous storage capacity caps, once again, with hard disk drives that use new Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) technology that permits a storage density of 1 terabit per square inch (1 trillion bits per square inch). 

In 2006, hard drive manufacturer Fujitsu developed HAMR technology, but Seagate is the first to apply it to a working hard drive and achieve the milestone 1 terabit per square inch storage density. 

Heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) does not suffer the same data storage limitations of today’s perpendicular magnetic storage technology. Using HAMR, hard drives can store single bits of information in a smaller area, by “flipping” the magnetic orientation of the heads. Traditionally, when small magnetic particles are flipped, they undergo a phenomenon called the “superparamagnetic effect,” where stored data is rendered unreadable. In new HAMR drives, by heating the high-stability metal compounds with lasers, high-stability magnetic compounds such as iron platinum alloy can store more data per square inch while maintaining stability.

Timelines for Release of Higher Density HDD

With this important storage threshold crossed, what can we expect for the future of storage media? 

Seagate says we’ll should see 6TB desktop hard drives (double today’s maximum storage capacity) in the first generation of HAMR drives. While Seagate is vague about a release date for these higher capacity drives, the company says the technology will scale quickly and we can expect 30TB to 60TB HDDs within the next 10 years. 

New Storage Developments Require New Data Recovery Methods

Larger hard drives increase the risk of losing mission critical data when a hard drive or RAID array fails. Rest assured, the data recovery specialists at 24 Hour Data are already study HAMR technology and developing the latest data recovery methods for HAMR HDDs.