Seagate achieves 1 terabit per square inch density

This is almost twice as high as in most modern HDDs. In practice, this means that in a 3.5-inch desktop form factor, 6 Terabytes of capacity will soon appear, and 2.5-inch notebooks will hold 2 Terabytes of information.

This high density was achieved through the use of thermally-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), combining magnetic reading and magneto-optical recording. A laser is mounted on the disk head, which heats the recording area, making it easier to re-magnetize. This allows the use of more resistant to magnetization reversal materials, which are less affected by the magnetic field of neighboring cells. This can reduce the size of the elementary recording area.

The linear size of the HAMR recording area is now 12.7 nanometers, or about 12 atoms. It is theoretically possible to bring this size up to 1 nanometer, and then the capacity of one HDD will reach 60 TB. Seagate plans to complete this distance in 10 years.

The price of new discs, as well as the possible effect of using a laser on the recording speed and power consumption of the discs are not yet known.
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Source: ExtremeTech