Seagate provided a quick update on the future of hard drives and shared some fresh insights on the launch of their next-generation hard drives with heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology. The company’s first commercial HAMR hard drive will likely offer 32 TB capacity in the third quarter of 2023, but new recording technology will allow capacities to reach 40 TB relatively quickly. . On the other hand, high-capacity HAMR HDDs will co-exist with the yet to be released 24 TB and 28 TB drives.
Seagate’s first 32 TB HAMR-based HDD will rely on the company’s 10-platter platform, which offers predictable yields similar to those the company already uses, eliminating one potential point of failure. Considering the company has to use new media and new write heads in his HAMR hard drives, it’s a reasonable move to keep reusing as many proven parts as possible. This 10-platter HAMR platform will likely be used for 36 TB, 40 TB, and even higher capacity HDDs in the future, with as little modification as possible.
“Going to HAMR, our 32TB is based on 10 disks and 20 heads,” Seagate Chief Financial Officer Gianluca Romano said at the Bank of America 2023 Global Technology Conference. (via) looking for alpha). “The next product is 36TB and is still based on 10 disks and 20 heads, so all the increases are coming from areal density. 20 disks and 20 heads, and 50TB, we said in our earnings call that we already have individual disks running at 5TB in our lab.”
Earlier this year, Seagate announced it would “launch the 30+ terabyte platform in the June quarter,” so expect these drives to be in the hands and racks of hyperscale cloud service providers in the coming months. .
The company said in April that it was shipping HAMR drives in Corvault systems to generate revenue, but declined to officially disclose its capacity, only stating that it would be based on a 30TB+ platform. showed that. Meanwhile, the company has shipped his HAMR HDD for certification to hyperscalers, which will deploy it after passing the tests.
In anticipation of the full-scale deployment of HAMR drives, some cloud service providers are using Seagate’s 24 TB HDDs, which rely on traditional perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology with two-dimensional magnetic recording (TDMR) read heads. may choose. In addition, some have 28 TB hard drives that use shingled magnetic recording. Meanwhile, Seagate stresses that these HDDs will be the last high-capacity nearline drives to use perpendicular magnetic recording.
“That means 24TB is coming soon. We’ll see it in the next few months,” said Romano. “This is his last PMR product, so I say this.” [higher] It could be a capacity point beyond 24TB PMR, which is 28TB SMR. ”
