Hard Drive 10TB per square inch, soon a reality

Although the solid-state storage solutions are spreading in a fairly consistent within the various market segments, traditional storage solutions magneto-mechanical properties are still used for some time for the retention of data in the medium to long term. The improvement of their capacities is therefore an important element for the industry as a whole and to which the researchers at the institute A * STAR of Singapore are working with various research activities.
 
One of the most recent concerns the technology of so-called "grain-based magnetic recording" which provides for the holding of information on a single granule of the magnetic film of the recording medium. The storage data based on magnetic recording provides that the surface on which the data are stored is divided into magnetic regions each one characterized by a uniform magnetization. Each of these regions is in turn composed of a few hundreds of "granules" magnetic, the size of ten nanometers each.
 
The current techniques for magnetic recording include the use of a single domain (and hence, more granules) for storing one bit of information, where the grain-based magnetic recording technology is based on the use of a single granule for magnetic storing one bit of information. The possibility of using a single granule would allow to increase the stability and reduce the magnetic fields necessary for writing a bit.
 
Scientists of 'A * STAR Institute, coordinated by researcher Melissa Chua, performed two different modeling, an analytical basis of a statistically based process of writing used in hard disk drives. The two modeling, applied to grain-based magnetic recording technology, have yielded consistent results demonstrating that this technology can be translated into practice to increase the information density magnetic storage media up to 10 terabits per square inch.
 
The hard drives made with current technology are characterized by information density of approximately 625 gigabits per square inch, with projections for the next year discussing about 900 gigabits per square inch. In the latter case, you can make 3.5-inch hard drive with a total capacity of 5TB, which means that a hard disk technology-based grain-based magnetic recording can easily exceed 50TB of total capacity.