Western Digital’s future hard drive will be microwave-powered. Microwave-Assisted Magnetic Recording (MAMR) is expected to allow hard drives with capacities of up to 40TB or more by 2025.
The basic gist of MAMR is that the writing head uses a microwave field to pack more bits of data into the same disk. WD is claiming that it can squeeze 4Tb of data per square inch on the spinner platter with this technology. Significantly, building a MAMR drive uses much of the same infrastructure as a more traditional Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording drive.
The technology is even more reliable than today. WD’s own tests shows that the average Time-to-Failure rate for the head is around 100x better than current technology. This translates to better data retention in the hard drives.
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WD is confident that it can push storage boundaries with MAMR. Currently the market’s largest 3.5-inch hard drive capacity is 14TB and WD is looking to release the first MAMR drives to the market within the next two years. So be on the look out for these drives on store shelves by 2019 at the earliest.
(Source: Western Digital )
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