{"id":19526,"date":"2012-03-20T14:49:12","date_gmt":"2012-03-20T04:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/power-up.space\/?p=19526"},"modified":"2012-03-20T14:49:12","modified_gmt":"2012-03-20T04:49:12","slug":"seagate-reaches-1-terabit-per-square-inch-milestone-in-hard-drive-storage-with-new-technology-demonstration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.impulsegamer.com\/wordpress\/?p=19526","title":{"rendered":"Seagate reaches 1 Terabit per square inch milestone in hard drive storage with new technology demonstration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cupertino, <\/strong>Calif.\u2014 March 19, 2012 \u2014 Seagate (NASDAQ:STX) has become the first hard drive maker to achieve the milestone storage density of 1 terabit (1 trillion bits) per square inch, producing a demonstration of the technology that promises to double the storage capacity of today\u2019s hard drives upon its introduction later this decade and give rise to 3.5-inch hard drives with an extraordinary capacity of up to 60 terabytes over the 10 years that follow. The bits within a square inch of disk space, at the new milestone, far outnumber stars in the Milky Way, which astronomers put between 200 billion and 400 billion.
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\nSeagate reached the landmark data density with heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), the next- generation recording technology. The current hard drive technology, Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR), is used to record the spectrum of digitized data \u2013 from music, photos, and video stored on home desktop and laptop PCs to business information housed in sprawling data centers \u2013 on the spinning platters inside every hard drive. PMR technology was introduced in 2006 to replace longitudinal recording, a method in place since the advent of hard drives for computer storage in 1956, and is expected to reach its capacity limit near 1 terabit per square inch in the next few years.\u00a0
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\n\u201cThe growth of social media, search engines, cloud computing, rich media and other data-hungry applications continues to stoke demand for ever greater storage capacity,\u201d said Mark Re, senior vice president of Heads and Media Research and Development at Seagate. \u201cHard disk drive innovations like HAMR will be a key enabler of the development of even more data-intense applications in the future, extending the ways businesses and consumers worldwide use, manage and store digital content.\u201d
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\nHard drive manufacturers increase areal density and capacity by shrinking a platter\u2019s data bits to pack more within each square inch of disk space. They also tighten the data tracks, the concentric circles on the disk\u2019s surface that anchor the bits. The key to areal density gains is to do both without disruptions to the bits\u2019 magnetization, a phenomenon that can garble data. Using HAMR technology, Seagate has achieved a linear bit density of about 2 million bits per inch, once thought impossible, resulting in a data density of just over 1 trillion bits, or 1 terabit, per square inch \u2013 55 percent higher than today\u2019s areal density ceiling of 620 gigabits per square inch.
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\nThe maximum capacity of today\u2019s 3.5-inch hard drives is 3 terabytes (TB), at about 620 gigabits per square inch, while 2.5-inch drives top out at 750 gigabytes (GB), or roughly 500 gigabits per square inch. The first generation of HAMR drives, at just over 1 terabit per square inch, will likely more than double these capacities \u2013 to 6TB for 3.5-inch drives and 2TB for 2.5-inch models. The technology offers a scale of capacity growth never before possible, with a theoretical areal density limit ranging from 5 to 10 terabits per square inch \u2013 30TB to 60TB for 3.5-inch drives and 10TB to 20TB for 2.5-inch drives.
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\nThe 1 terabit per square inch demonstration extends a long line of storied technology firsts for Seagate, including:
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