The good-old mechanical hard drive is not quite dead yet. SSDs will probably never beat it in one area, namely cost per GB. Recent developments from Seagate may cement this advantage since the company has come up with a new technology that significantly increases the storage density from about 600Mbit per square inch to 1Tbit.
Seagate has its sights sets at much more than a near-doubling of the density though–in a not-too-distant future, a mechanical drive could be able to store up to 20 times the currently largest capacities.
The technology is called HAMR, which is an acronym for Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording. It all comes down to a laser that heats the magnetic disk surface, making it possible to increase storage density and, as a consequence, roomier hard drives.
As of now, the largest hard drive capacity is 3 TB, but if HAMR can deliver this could quickly double to 6 TB (3.5-inch hard drives) in a couple of years. Seagate goes on to predict that HAMR will be able to reach 5-10 Tb per square inch. Within a decade or so, this could enable the production of hard drives with a capacity of 30-60 TB in the 3.5-inch form factor and 10-20 TB for 2.5 inch-drives.
Seagate has not revealed when HAMR might show up in actual products, but according to previous information, the technology is expected to be ready for prime time in 2014 or 2015. Meanwhile, SSD technology is advancing backwards.