R&D: Heat Assisted Interlaced Magnetic Recording

IEEE Transactions on Magnetics ( Volume: PP, Issue: 99 ) as published an article written by Steven Granz, Wenzhong Zhu, Seagate Technology, 1280 Disc Drive, Shakopee, MN 55379, USA, Edmun Chian Song Seng, Utt Heng Kan, Seagate Technology, 26 Ayer Rajah Crescent, Shugart, 139944, Singapore, Chris Rea, Seagate Technology, 7801 Computer Avenue, Bloomington, MN 55435, USA, Ganping Ju, Jan-Ulrich Thiele, Seagate Technology, 47488 Kato Road, Fremont, CA, 94538, USA, Tim Rausch and, Edward C. Gage, Seagate Technology, 1280 Disc Drive, Shakopee, MN 55379, USA.

Abstract: “Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) is the next generation hard disk drive technology that enables continued and significant areal density growth. There are currently two common architectures for the layout of tracks in hard disk drives: Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) and Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR). In CMR, any track can be written at any time and neighboring tracks do not intentionally overlap. In SMR, the tracks are written sequentially in bands with the tracks intentionally overlapping like shingles on a roof. In this paper, we introduce a novel track layout, Interlaced Magnetic Recording (IMR) and apply it to a HAMR recording system. With Heat Assisted Interlaced Magnetic Recording (HIMR), we observed a 31% increase in areal density over HAMR CMR whereas in a HAMR SMR architecture, we observed a 27% increase in areal density over HAMR CMR.“