Technologies are described herein for relaxing design constraints on magnetic recording media through the use of two-dimensional magnetic recording in a storage device. A storage device comprises a magnetic recording surface comprising a plurality of discrete storage locations formatted in an ordered pattern, the magnetic recording surface configured so that a single bit of data is stored in two or more of the discrete storage locations. The storage device further includes a read-write channel configured to utilize two-dimensional magnetic recording to read and write data to the magnetic recording surface.