Disclosed is a thermally assisted magnetic recording medium comprising a substrate, a plurality of underlayers formed on the substrate, and a magnetic layer which is formed on the underlayers and predominantly comprised of an alloy having a L10 structure, characterized in that at least one of the underlayers is predominantly comprised of MgO and comprises at least one kind of a metal element having a melting point of at least 2,000° C., such as Nb, Mo, Ru, Ta or W. The thermally assisted magnetic recording medium has magnetic crystal grains having uniform size in the magnetic layer, and has a narrow switching field distribution (SFD), and a magnetic recording storage provided with the thermally assisted magnetic recording medium exhibits a high SN ratio.