Communications of the ACM
New Research Could Push Hard Drives Into the Multi-Terabytes
A new Ars Technica research paper in Nature Photonics implies that hard drives with terabytes-per-square-inch areal densities may soon emerge—and with them, a dramatic explosion in capacities.
The paper identifies thermally assisted recording (TAR) and bit-patterned recording (BPR) as the two conventional techniques for recording data to hard drive platters. The drawback to both methods is that neither permit conventional hard drives to hit areal densities outside of the gigabytes-per-square-inch range. However, Ars Technica's Casey Johnston says the combination of TAR and BPR's capabilities resolves each method's shortcomings.
"With BPR's magnetic islands, small-grain media is no longer needed, and TAR ensures that only the bit that is heated is written, eliminating the need for a specific size of write head," Johnston writes in the Ars Technica announcement. "Together, they form a writing system that can limit bits to tiny areas on inexpensive surfaces, and don't affect surrounding data bits." The consequence of this innovation is an immense surge of data.
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