Research company Isupply has released a report in which it says that hard-drive capacity will be 10 to 20 times more by the year 2016. Manufacturers currently use perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) , but this technology is almost at its maximum capacity. Fortunately there a new developments, such a new method researched by Seagate that is called heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology.
The researchers of Isupply expect that we'll have 5TB harddisks at the end of this year, but more interestingly, they expect that by 2016 we could expect drives of 30-60 TB for the 3.5" formfactor. Smaller drives (2.5") are expected to reach a capacity of 10-20 TB.
