Magnetic recording will be 100 years old next year and during that time it grew to become the main depository for information storage. In the arena of high performance rigid disks, areal densities have increased more than a million times since the appearance of the first disk drives some 40 years ago. The state of the technology will continue to grow from the present 2.6 Gbits/in2 to reach the celebrated goal of 10 Gits/in2 around the turn of the century. This goal will be achieved by evolutionary changes in the current longitudinal recording format. For the next stage of advancement to perhaps 30 Gbits/in2 more fundamental changes will be required, including perpendicular recording, oxide films, high saturation head materials, and the marriage with optics for high density tracking. Beyond 30 Gbits/in2 more revolutionary changes will be required, including patterned single domain nanoparticle arrays and near-field super-resolution optical probes. These innovations can eventually carry the technology to beyond 1 Tbit/in2!