| Shingled magnetic recording (SMR) is a technique for writing data to a hard disk drive (HDD) whereby the data tracks partially overlap to increase the areal density and overall storage capacity per disk. The term SMR derives from the manner in which installers apply shingles to a roof, with portions of the shingles overlapping each other. Experts expect SMR-enabled HDDs to become more commonplace for applications that write data sequentially. Conventional magnetic HDDs pack narrow concentric tracks in parallel as closely as possible to increase data density. The recorded signal must sharply diminish on both sides of a newly written track in order to leave a gap between tracks, and that task becomes more difficult as tracks get narrower and closer together. Manufacturers have to shrink the width of the magnetic poles on the write element in the read/write head to accommodate the narrow writing. The constriction of the poles has the unwanted consequence of reducing the strength of the magnetic field to write data to the disk. SMR HDDs take a different approach to overcome the physical limitation of conventional hard drives. The head is relatively wide, and the SMR drive writes the data tracks strictly sequentially in overlapping fashion. The write width and pole-tip width can be much larger than the resulting final track width, or shingled width. As a result, the system can use a relatively strong writer to create very narrow tracks and achieve greater data density. Continue reading... | 
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