From InfoWorld: Seagate Technology is boosting investments in laser-assisted hard disk drive technology that it projects will allow it to increase capacity five-fold.
The laser technology, known as heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), is able to write smaller, more-stable bits onto the magnetic surface of a spinning disk. Today, Seagate's largest capacity drive using conventional recording is 6TB. Using HAMR, that capacity could theoretically increase to 30TB.
Last month, Invest Northern Ireland, a regional business development agency, announced Seagate had dropped about $55 million into further financing its existing wafer facility in Northern Ireland, which is developing HAMR technology. The Dublin facility is one of two working on HAMR; the other is located in Minnesota.
The marketing campaign Seagate has used is "20TB by 2020," but Seagate CTO Mark Re told Computerworld that's just a target. Seagate is planning to release its first HAMR-enabled drives in 2016.
"We're still doing development of the technology," Re said. "It's not like we're ready to ramp for production."
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