A magnetic recording medium was a high normalized coercive force and superior thermal stability. The magnetic recording medium comprises a non-magnetic base material, and a ferromagnetic metal layer of cobalt based alloy formed on top of this base material with a metal underlayer disposed therebetween, and displays a coercive force Hc of at least 2000 (Oe) and an anisotropic magnetic field Hkgrain of at least 10,000 (Oe). Furthermore, magnetic recording media in which the aforementioned metal underlayer and/or the ferromagnetic metal layer are fabricated in a film fabrication chamber with an ultimate vacuum at the 10−9 Torr level are preferred. A magnetic recording medium according to the present invention can be ideally applied to hard disks, floppy disks, and magnetic tapes and the like.