Abstract: Hard disk drives, which are based on magnetic storage technology, are currently the main carriers of mass information. With the rapid development of the Internet of Things and cloud computing, conventional hard disk drives cannot fulfill the increasing demand for data storage. As a consequence, industries are devoting their efforts to develop new storage technology, and various new products have been launched. Starting from the structure of conventional hard disk drives, this article will give a detailed description of the main bottlenecks faced by conventional magnetic storage, then introduce energy-assisted magnetic recording technology, which has attracted great attention in recent years, and finally provide some insight into the future of mass storage.