TDK recently talked about the latest tech in HDDs that support heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology. HDDs based on this technology may hit the market in late 2015 or early 2016 and will get huge volume sizes, think capacities of up to 15TB here.

Heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is a technology that magnetically records data on high-stability media using laser thermal assistance to first heat the material. HAMR takes advantage of high-stability magnetic compounds such as iron platinum alloy.

These materials can store single bits in a much smaller area without being limited by the same superparamagnetic effect that limits the current technology used in hard disk storage. This is achieved by heating the materials before applying the changes in magnetic orientation. No hard disks using HAMR are currently on the market, but HAMR is expected to eventually be used for hard disk drives with higher capacities than is possible today. A spokesperson for TDK, who have demonstrated read/write heads supporting HAMR, has stated that the technology could appear in commercial hard drives by late 2015 to early 2016.

Most major HDD menaufacturers will jump on this, including TDK, Seagate and Western Digital.

STOP - HAMR time. Woohooo :)





