New hard drive write method packs in one terabyte per inch

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Hard disk systems have recently encounted a storage density ceiling. Most methods in use today have a limit of a few hundred gigabytes per square inch thanks to perpendicular recording. To try to keep storage density rising, scientists have looked at technologies from holographic storage to molecular polymers, but few have made it past the demonstration stage. In a paper in Nature Photonics this week, researchers describe a way to combine two hard drive writing methods to store data at densities of up to one terabyte per square inch, and suggest the media could be stable up to ten terabytes per square inch.

Each of the two write methods deals with the issue of writing pieces of data very close together without affecting the bits around it. When bits are tightly packed, an effect called superparamagnetism can kick in, where the tiny amount of heat created by the write head will accidentally flip nearby bits and ruin surrounding data. As researchers attempt to pack data bits tighter into a surface, being able to write to an isolated bit without disturbing surrounding ones has become very challenging.

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