A scratch erasure resistant perpendicular magnetic recording medium comprises a non-magnetic substrate having a surface, and a layer stack formed over the surface and comprising: (i) at least one magnetically hard perpendicular magnetic recording layer; and (ii) at least one low shear modulus layer comprising at least one material having a shear modulus not greater than about 30 GPa. Preferably, the at least one magnetically hard perpendicular magnetic recording layer includes at least a first layer comprised of a magnetic material having a hexagonal close packed (hcp) crystal structure and <0001> preferred basal plane crystallographic orientation with c-axis perpendicular to a surface thereof.