Seagate hopes to deliver to its customers, shingled magnetic recording disk drives with enhanced storage set releasing later in 2013 and in 2014. They plan to introduce HAMR, or heat-assisted magnetic recording technology, which will be released two years ahead of schedule. This early release could be due to Seagate's reaction to the helium gas attack prepared by the WD division HGST.

Shingled magnetic recording functions by overlapping data tracks to create extra space. SMR will be issued on disk drives as revealed to Rocky Pimental, primary marketing and sales executive, at Stifel Tech conference by Andy Rakers, an analyst for Stifle Nicolaus. Perpendicular Magnetic technology for disk drives is entering the final stages of development since any additional reduction of magnetized bits causes them to be unstable, which means that storage companies should proceed to a more modern technology.

Pimental stated the new technology would give the drives an extra 20-25% raise in density. Upgrading the disk drive to SMR would increase space to 5 TB. He also mentioned Seagate will begin distributing the 5mm dense 2.5 inch dual disk drive with a hybrid form in tablet PCs and other lightweight notebooks later in 2013. Last March, Seagate talked about a decade of HAMR technology which could generate a 3.5 inch drive with storage capacities of 60TB. Western Digital and Toshiba have made no announcements about the technology they prefer, though, a contest can be expected between HGST applying helium plus SMR and Seagate using HAMR and SMR. Pimental said the premium cost will not be important for shipping over one million hard drives

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