We have already talked at length about the vast majority of technologies that are going to amaze the world when it comes to HDDs. And it is that we only have one to talk about (until further notice) which is, perhaps, the most striking and characteristic of all because others that we have seen are based on it. We are talking about EAMR, the prime technology that has brought forth two new strands of future hard drives. how does it work?
Lately it is only spoken in the sector of hard drives of the eternal fight between HAMR and MAMR . That if advantages of one, that if disadvantages of another, and in short, which of these technologies is better, but what few know is what is the origin of this fight and on which they are based to have been selected as a cornerstone in Seagate and Western Digital .
EAMR: the beginning of everything with heat as the main source
We have already spoken in other HAMR and MAMR articles specifically, so we will assume that we already have the necessary information from both, which will facilitate understanding of everything we are going to explain.
EAMR as such is a technology that started as a promising proposition for the industry and has ended up not being a standard because it has quickly become obsolete before it can even be presented as an improvement in HDDs.
Its abbreviations refer to magnetic recording assisted by energy , a term very faithful to what it achieves in hard drives, since it was defined based on the ability to record high-density data under a nanometric scale.
Although the term speaks of energy for being totally technical and faithful, the reality is that the effect achieved from the head to the plate is an extreme temperature increase, that is, it generates a lot of heat. The main source for this is a high powered laser, which later ended up being HAMR in its most refined form.
Heat from a laser beam changes the magnetic properties of the dish
Already in 2015 everything was focused on an energy point that had such precision that through a highly efficient optical coupling and a delivery of energy highly focused on the characteristics of the dish and much smaller and more compact than the optical wavelength, it was possible to reverse the polarity of the materials and thereby allow the recording of the data.
The first tests determined that with a wavelength of 450 nm , point sizes in the dish could be generated below 40 nm, which would exponentially increase the capacity of future HDDs. Currently, both Seagate and WD (plus the first one) are capable of recording below those 40 nm , although the improvements in this aspect are not known for sure.
In short, EAMR is the basis of the two technologies that will dominate the HDD market for at least a decade, it is at the same time the least known for being a primeval version and more associated with MAMR and instead is the beginning of the paradigm shift in the hard drive industry as we know it.
