Saturday, April 22nd 2023
Seagate Starts Shipment of Extra High Capacity HAMR HDDs to Data Center Client
Seagate is celebrating the debut shipment of very sophisticated storage solutions to a preferred client (dealing in the cloud data center sector). These 30+ terabyte hard drives are based on heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology - the American data storage company is setting up its next generation Corvault range with the thermal magnetic recording methodology. The first shipment of HAMR-based drives is reported to consist of final qualification samples, but Seagate is anticipating that fully verified equipment - after trial customers give this new product lineup a thumbs-up - will be generating revenue in the coming weeks.
According to a transcript of a recent Seagate financial meeting conference call, CEO Dave Mosley mentioned a dip in business as well as a costly legal settlement, but expects company fortunes to rise due to client uptake of breakthrough storage technologies: "Beyond this cycle, we remain excited about the long-term opportunities presented by the secular growth of data and the relevance of mass capacity storage as new data-centric applications emerge and more workloads migrate to the cloud. We continue to make strong progress on our industry-leading technology road map, including launching HAMR-based products this quarter, which we believe put us in outstanding longer-term position."
Mosley set out ambitious plans for its heat-assisted magnetic recording technology, with second generation drives targeted for release later in 2023. The CEO has high hopes for an upcoming Seagate Corvault product lineup in 2024 - revenue is expected to grow from a higher adoption rate of fully matured systems: "Our goal is to emerge a stronger, more agile company able to navigate well in all demand environments, return to profitable growth and preserve our technology leadership momentum. To that end, we have not let up on executing our HAMR-based product road map to preserve our significant time-to-market advantage. We are tracking well to our stated plans and achieved the key milestone last week of shipping initial qualification units to a cloud launch partner, and we expect to recognize initial revenue from 30-plus terabyte platforms this quarter as part of our Corvault system solutions. The decades of development that have led us to HAMR productization are even more important today as highly cost-efficient, mass capacity storage will be a competitive enabler in a world where data is rapidly growing and increasing in value. We believe HAMR will further extend the large and sustainable cost advantage multiple compared to other storage media, even with current market prices. Additionally, Seagate's ability to service this growing demand through areal density gains by increasing capacities from three to four to five terabytes per disc or more provides far greater capital efficiencies compared with current PMR technology over time."
Sources:
Seeking Alpha, Tom's Hardware
According to a transcript of a recent Seagate financial meeting conference call, CEO Dave Mosley mentioned a dip in business as well as a costly legal settlement, but expects company fortunes to rise due to client uptake of breakthrough storage technologies: "Beyond this cycle, we remain excited about the long-term opportunities presented by the secular growth of data and the relevance of mass capacity storage as new data-centric applications emerge and more workloads migrate to the cloud. We continue to make strong progress on our industry-leading technology road map, including launching HAMR-based products this quarter, which we believe put us in outstanding longer-term position."
24 Comments on Seagate Starts Shipment of Extra High Capacity HAMR HDDs to Data Center Client
thanks a lot now I have this in my head
but for real, who uses HDDs in 2023 ?! :fear:
I have 4 hdd and 5 ssd's in my pc with a combined storage capacity of 50 TB. Just to give an idea of how exciting 30 Tb or more is on 1 hdd.
Who uses hdd in 2023?
I do, but only for storage. Ssd for everything else.
Several years ago when first 8 TB SATA SSDs we’re announced (Samsung 870 QVO) I hoped I’d soon change at least the drive in my PC to SSD - but it would be expensive, and slower than a HDD (QVO drives fall to 80 - 120 MB/s once you fill the cache), and since then no other drive challenged them, they’re just producing smaller drives with faster and faster speeds that bring absolutely nothing to user experience. :-(
Hmmmm...
Only HDDs, old Xeons, pcie2 and DDR3 ATM.
And I can hear those fans in my bathroom, doors closed. :laugh: and there's livingroom between them. :roll:
More than a couple companies have 12-24+TB NAND drives 'in the works'
IMO, there's little reason to get excited over HAMR (in consumer drives) if it's just as liable to bitrot like NANDflash.
Back then my servers were stuttering, freezing and rebooting because of these Seagate drives.
Use HDSentinel to keep tabs on your drive's health.
I replaced them with HGST 7200 RPM drives and since WD purchased Hitachi Global Storage, I started buying WD Red Pro drives. I currently have about 28 Red Pro's and a few HGST drives installed in 2 media servers (Primary and a Backup Server). The smallest drives are 6TB and I currently buy WD 22TB drives as I upgrade out the smaller ones.
Since I stopped buying Seagate drives 8 years ago, I have not had to replace a single spinning drive in either server. Both servers are connected to UPS batteries and PowerVAR torroidial power filter systems.
I never saw a cent of relief from their crappy products. Their warranties are worthless. You pay to send them a drive and they send you back some suckers patched up refurbished drive that fails in a week. Wash rinse, repeat.
www.pcworld.com/article/419441/seagate-slapped-with-a-class-action-lawsuit-over-hard-drive-failure-rates.html
www.extremetech.com/extreme/222267-seagate-faces-lawsuit-over-3tb-hard-drive-failure-rates
www.tomshardware.com/news/seagate-hdd-failure-lawsuit-3tb,31118.html
Their history is littered with shady business practices.
Also be careful of spinners with S.M.R. drive tech (Shingled Magnetic Recording)
www.techpowerup.com/265889/seagate-guilty-of-undisclosed-smr-on-certain-internal-hard-drive-models-too-report
Then there's the performance HIT
www.howtogeek.com/803276/cmr-vs.-smr-hard-drives-whats-the-difference/
Whether or not HAMR is reliable, I will wait for someone ELSE to beta test these products for a few years.
I knew there were more reasons (to personally blacklist Seagate) than my 1st 1TB drive "self-terminating" via firmware.Correct. Write amplification, and by extension Service Life, is a real bitch on QLC.
There's fixes though.
Ex: P1600Xs are $35-60 right now. QLC drive + primocache + optane = long-lived and fast QLC SSD.
www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/should-i-buy-primocache.286906/post-4995966
Nothing wrong with SMR drives in the right circumstances, that's what WD are using as well.
I feel your pain in the failure of drives, but I've had the opposite experience, only killed WD drives, only lost 1 seagate due to user error (namely dropping a house key on an exposed operating drive which cause an arc across the pcb)
I still have a functioning 40 meg Seagate drive from 1994 (it was second hand at that time too)
I'll be your HAMR guinea pig when I can lay my hands upon them for a reasonable price per TB.