In 2011, the primary storage vendors decided to concentrate future development of high-density hard drives using the heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology, according to EE Times.
HAMR uses a new material for making platters that allows data to be written by raising the temperature of the material in specific points that can be read by a magnetic field.
HAMR could eventually allow the development of hard drives with densities of up to 50 terabits per square inch