Seagate will be demonstrating its next generation heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology at CEATEC 2013. The HAMR technology is poised to power a 20 Terabyte drive by as early as 2020. Currently shipping shingled magnetic recording technology (SMR), Seagate will continue to push the limits of storage capacities with HAMR in an effort to fulfill the demand for storage fueled by cloud and mobile usage. Critical for continued improvement in areal density, HAMR increases storage capacity by heating the medium with a laser-generated beam at the precise spot where data bits are being recorded. When heated, the medium becomes easier to write and the rapid subsequent cooling stabilizes the written data. The result of this heat-assisted recording is a dramatic increase in the recorded density.

HAMR, combined with self-ordered magnetic arrays of iron-platinum particles, is expected to break the limit of magnetic recording by more than a factor of 100 to ultimately deliver storage densities as great as 50 terabits per square inch.

Seagate's next-generation HAMR technology will be incorporated into a 2.5-inch enterprise drive, spinning at 10K RPM.