Nextatic Data Recovery

Modern HDD technologies that are bringing hard disks back

Don't write off HDDs just yet. Energy-assisted technologies such as MAMR and HAMR may keep hard disk drives competitive in an evolving secondary storage market.

Hard disk drives may be considered obsolete by some, but modern HDD technologies have made significant strides in increasing storage capacity and speed. SSDs, cloud-based storage and software-defined storage may have made headlines in recent years, but HDDs are set for a comeback.

Thanks to some new -- and not so new -- developments, HDD technologies are becoming more competitive in the secondary storage market. Energy-assisted technologies, also referred to as energy-assisted magnetic recording (EAMR), enable vendors to increase HDD density and capacity without putting additional disks inside the hard drive.

Microwave-assisted magnetic recording (MAMR) and heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) are getting a lot of attention in the storage market, but they're just two of the technologies you should be familiar with. EAMR technologies such as shingled and perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) have paved the way for increased HDD capacity.