Since the introduction of magnetoresistive (MR) heads, the areal density of hard disk drives (HDDs) has been increasing at a rate of 60% a year, and has now reached 1.4 Gb/sq. in. The data rate has also been increasing at a rate of 40% or more, and this has recently become a key factor in the ability of multimedia applications to transfer stored data rapidly from the HDD to the PC or workstation. Currently, data rates of around 150 Mb/sec are being implemented in products. In this study, key technologies for increasing both the areal density and the data rate of HDDs are proposed. If they are implemented, an areal density of around 10 Gb/sq. in. and a data rate of 200 Mb/sec or more can be achieved.