Seagate plans to significantly increase the capacity of its best hard drives this year. In the first or second quarter, the company will introduce 22 TB and 24 TB HDDs based on its latest platform, but already in the third quarter, Seagate announced the introduction of heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology. We plan to release the industry’s first hard drive with 30TB.
30 TB HAMR HDD Coming Soon, 50 TB on the Horizon
Seagate has long had high hopes for HAMR and has been shipping HAMR-based HDDs for evaluation to customers who have opted for them for several years. The company plans to release the first mass-market hard drives with the second generation of his HAMR platform in the third quarter, the company said on its earnings call this week.
Seagate Chief Executive Officer Dave Mosley said on a conference call: Seeking Alpha). “The speed of his initial HAMR volume growth will depend on many factors, including product yield and customer qualification timelines. intend to do something.”
So far, Seagate hasn’t revealed much about its first HAMR platform, including how many platters you can install on the drive. Meanwhile, the 30TB+ capacity will allow the company to offer customers unprecedented storage density of his 3.5-inch HDD. The storage specialist admits that the share of HAMR-based hard drives is not very high this year, but will increase as production of HAMR media and his HAMR heads increases.
Initially, the company will use HAMR disks and heads to create ultra-premium, highest-capacity nearline drives for hyperscale cloud data centers. But ultimately, new media and heads will be used in mid-range and entry-level high-capacity HDDs, reducing manufacturing costs and increasing Seagate’s margins.
“This year, [the share of HAMR HDDs] A Seagate official said it’s probably still relatively low.”If we can raise yields and scrap and bring down all the costs we can control in heads and media faster, we’ll accelerate faster. That’s the 2024 calendar year.” and will continue to accelerate in calendar year 2025. Address the point of maximum capacity. […] These midrange capacity points also […].”
30 TB HDDs are just around the corner, but Seagate says they’ve also managed to squeeze 5 TB of data onto a single 3.5-inch disk in the lab. more).At the moment such disks are only used in spin standbut as the company learned more about them, they were migrated to prototype drives and eventually to commercial HDDs.
According to the company’s published roadmap, Seagate plans to offer 50TB+ hard drives in 2026, giving HDD makers plenty of time to polish 50TB media for mass production. I have.
22TB and 24TB HDDs Coming Soon
With HAMR, Seagate’s HDD capacity will expand rapidly over the next few years, but the company is looking to improve its hard drives featuring perpendicular/conventional magnetic recording (CMR/PMR) and shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technologies. continue. In Q1 or Q2, the company plans to release his CMR/PMR HDD of 10 platters with 2.2 TB disk and 22 TB capacity. His SMR version of such a drive further increases capacity to 24 TB for those who want to use rubble magnetic recording.
The new 22 TB CMR/PMR and 24 TB SMR HDDs will serve as the company’s top-of-the-line workhorse, replacing the 20 TB CMR/PMR and 22 TB SMR hard drives from this position.
“Our 20 TB products feature 2 TB per disk capacity, and we are beginning to increase the volume of our 22 TB products deployed at 2.2 TB per disk capacity,” Mosley said. “The 20+ TB platform is traditionally based on his PMR technology, and some customers have opted to enable SMR technology as an added feature that slightly increases drive capacity for certain applications. I’m here. [… ] We are implementing plans to increase capacity per disk by an additional 10% to provide 20 TB mid-to-upper range drives on this PMR platform. “
first loss in years
Seagate’s product roadmap for the rest of the year looks very promising, but the company’s quarter, which ended December 30, 2022, is only depressing as the company reported its first loss in years.
During the second quarter of fiscal 2023, Seagate posted revenue of $1,887 million, down 39.5% year-on-year and lost $33 million. By contrast, the company’s revenue reached $3.116 billion in the second quarter of fiscal 2022, with net income totaling $501 million.
