Highly chemically ordered L1 0 FePtX-Y nano-granular films with high perpendicular magnetic anisotropy are key media approaches for future heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR). They are sputtered at elevated temperature on glass disks coated with adhesion, heat sink, and texturing layers. Adding X ¼ Ag reduces the required deposition temperature and X ¼ Cu lowers the Curie temperature. Current seed layers are NiTa for adhesion and heat sink and well-oriented MgO (002) layers for highly textured FePtX(002) grains surrounded by Y ¼ carbon and/or other segregants. Magnetic anisotropies larger than 4.5 Â 10 7 erg cm À3 and coercivities beyond 5 Tesla have been achieved. The combination of thermal conductivity and Curie temperature determines the required laser power during recording. Key goals are to optimize media, heads, head-disk-spacing, and read-back channels to extend the areal density to 1.5-5 Tb in À2