IT abroad: Hard drive’s storage density reaches milestone

Seagate Technology, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of hard disk drives, announces it has become the first hard drive maker to achieve the milestone storage density of 1 terabit (1 trillion bits) per square inch.

Seagate says it reached the landmark data density with “heat-assisted magnetic recording” (HAMR), the next-generation recording technology. The technology promises to double the storage capacity of today’s hard drives upon its introduction later this decade and give rise to 3.5-inch hard drives with a capacity of up to 60 terabytes over the 10 years that follow.

The current hard drive technology, Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) is expected to reach its capacity limit near 1 terabit per square inch in the next few years, Seagate announces. 

PMR technology was introduced to replace longitudinal recording, a method in place since the advent of hard drives for computer storage in 1956.

By using HAMR technology, Seagate has achieved data density of just over one trillion bits, or one terabit, per square inch - 55% higher than today’s areal density ceiling of 620 gigabits per square inch. Hard drive manufacturers increase areal density and capacity by shrinking a platter’s data bits to pack more within each square inch of disk space. They also tighten the data tracks, the concentric circles on the disk’s surface that anchor the bits. The key to areal density gains is to do both without disruptions to the bits’ magnetization, a phenomenon that can garble data.