Heat-assisted magnetic recording for ultrahigh capacity HDDs

Data is growing faster than the world’s ability to store it. In 2025, the people of Earth generated 180 zettabytes of data — but only 6 zettabytes of storage capacity is manufactured each year. Today's heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) hard drive products utilize integrate photonic technologies to meet storage demand. HAMR technology development featured a number of key inventions including a whole new media recording layer based on ordered FePt and a plasmonic near field transducer. The ability to record on very high anisotropy granular media with a recording footprint defined by a thermal spot in the media, has allowed us to extend capacities to 3 TB/disk and beyond in a 3.5" form factor. Demonstrations at 7 TB/disk will be shown along with ideas to extend the technology to 10 TB/disk.