A roadmap released by the Advanced Storage Technology Consortium (ASTC) shows that new technologies released over the coming years will enable 100 TB HDDs by 2025. It's expected that we'll see 10 TB HDDs next year which has been become possible due to the introduction of Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) and Helium filled drives. But it doesn't stop here, in fact a lot of new technology will be developed for HDDs.
The previous mentioned SMR drives combined with Helium are expected to increase disk capacities till 2017, from then on Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording Plus (HAMR+) should be the leading technology. The roadmap shows that technologies are often combined to increase data density which is where the Plus (+) comes from, HAMR is expected to be combined with SMR.
By 2021 a technology called Bit Pattern Media Recording (BPMR) should be introduced which will later be joined by the HAMR technology, together called Heated Dot Magnetic Recording. In between there's BPMR+, which is a combination of BPMR, SMR and the older Two Dimensional Magnetic Recording (TMDR).
If all the abbreviations are dazzling you then just know that all these technology are developed to increase the capacities of HDDs. Currently it's possible to fit 0.86 Terabit per square inch on HDDs in 10 year that number will be as large as 10 Terabit per square inch, or a ten fold increase.
When we interpolate that number, our 10 TB HDDs in 2015, will be 100 TB HDDs in 2025, according to digital storage consultant Tom Coughlin.
