Seagate achieves one terabit per square inch, 60TB HDDs are on the way

Seagate achieves one terabit per square inch, 60TB HDDs are on the way

Seagate has made a breakthrough squeezing one terabit (1 trillion bits) of memory on a square inch of platter (which is, as the PR would gladly point out, a lot more than all the stars in our Milky Way galaxy). To achieve this Seagate uses the completely new Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) technology, as opposed to the current Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) tech. This means the very first 3.5” generation of these new drives will offer north of 6TB capacity.We all knew this moment was coming for quite some time. The current generation of hard drives reached its limits – the 3.5” PMR drives could offer maximum of 3TB storage (or 750GB for the 2.5” ones).And Seagate claims the new technology is capable of even bigger things – the theoretical maximum being at 10 terabits per square inch. This means it could deliver up to 60TB worth of storage from a 3.5” HDD unit.Seagate estimates these new drives will enter the market in a few years, while the 60TB monsters should hit mass production within the decade.