Seagate: 20 TB HAMR Drives Arrive in December, 50 TB Capacities in 2026

AleksandarK · Oct 28, 2020

In its latest earnings call, Seagate, a manufacturer of high-capacity drives, has revealed several interesting points about its upcoming releases of next-generation hard drives. More specifically, the company has disclosed a shift to a new generation of HDDs based on so-called heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology. This technology is set to bring many improvements compared to the one currently used by Seagate's rivals like Western Digital. The rivaling company uses energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording (ePMR) and microwave-assisted (MAMR) technologies and it already has a 20 TB drive in the offering. Seagate announced that they will unveil a 20 TB HDD in December this year, with the use of HAMR technology, which will bring many improvements like better speed and more efficient disk read/write.

"We remain on track to ship 20-TB HAMR drives starting in December, which is an important milestone, as we believe HAMR technology will be the industry's path to scaling a real density and increasing drive capacities," said Dave Mosley, CEO of Seagate. "Seagate will be the first to ship this crucial technology with a path to deliver 50-TB HAMR drives forecast in 2026."

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Space Lynx · Oct 28, 2020

that's insane lol. 50tb in a single 3.5" drive. wtf. lmao

Deleted member 24505 · Oct 28, 2020

lynx29 said:
that's insane lol. 50tb in a single 3.5" drive. wtf. lmao

Still slower than an average SSD/m2 drive

Caring1 · Oct 28, 2020

It's HAMR time.

ebivan · Oct 28, 2020

Wasn't HAMR announced like 12 years ago and never really launched since?
Will be great filling 50TB at 200MB/s...

kayjay010101 · Oct 28, 2020

lynx29 said:
that's insane lol. 50tb in a single 3.5" drive. wtf. lmao

Well, then you should be pleasantly surprised by the Nimbus Data 3.5" SSDs. They have a 100TB SSD available for purchase today. In a single 3.5" drive form factor.

buzzi · Oct 28, 2020

good luck with chkdsk /r

Tomorrow · Oct 28, 2020

I very much doubt they will be able to realize this goal by 2026. Right now we are about to get 20TB drives. In 2013 we had 3 TB. So in 7 years we gained 6,66x capacity. Or 17 TB.
If we multiply 20 by 6,66 that would give 133 TB but that's way too unrealistic as capacity advances have slowed down.

More realistic outlook would be to add another 17 TB in 5 years. That would still be 37 TB in 2026. Still 13 TB short of the 50 TB number.

owen10578 · Oct 28, 2020

Unless they can read in GB/s speeds they will take forever to fill a 50TB drive, I don't see why would any typical home user would need one.

Vayra86 · Oct 28, 2020

Caring1 said:
It's HAMR time.

I don't know if its the right name for an HDD, to name it after the only tool that will certainly destroy it.

Sort of seeing little imps running about with hammers when I think of data being processed on this drive, too. I guess I'm weird.

s3thra · Oct 28, 2020

ebivan said:
Wasn't HAMR announced like 12 years ago and never really launched since?
Will be great filling 50TB at 200MB/s...

Indeed. Here it is mentioned in a 2002 article where Seagate was demonstrating it then:

Seagate Technology - Heats get Underway for Seagate Young Innovators Final

ExcuseMeWtf · Oct 28, 2020

So they are actually behind WD in that regard. Okay. We'll see who will be first to 50 TB though.

beautyless · Oct 28, 2020

Having a high speed is useful for storing large amounts of data at one time.
But in actual use, it is often the accumulation of data over a long period of time, such as 1 year in order to fill the capacity.

chris.london · Oct 28, 2020

ebivan said:
Wasn't HAMR announced like 12 years ago and never really launched since?
Will be great filling 50TB at 200MB/s...

Imagine rebuilding a 6 disk RAID-Z2/RAID 6 array...

kayjay010101 · Oct 28, 2020

Having a 50TB in something like FreeNAS or unRAID would suck... imagine if a drive fails and you need to do a parity check/rebuild of the array. That'd take about a week! My 8TB-parity unraid array takes ~24 hours, so at 50TB the parity calculations would take atleast 6.25x longer...
And for other uses (so non-NAS use), who would choose a hard drive over an SSD? Especially 6 years from now lol?

zlobby · Oct 28, 2020

2026? Ho-ho-ho! Quite optimistic to think there would be anyone left to buy these then.

Metroid · Oct 28, 2020

We already have a ssd 3.5 100tb, nothing new and here they say 50tb by 2026, by 2026, we will have a 1000tb ssd or more. I guess hard drives are bound to die, for now in price they can compete but not for long unless they really deliver something extraordinary.

Proedros · Oct 28, 2020

s3thra said:
Indeed. Here it is mentioned in a 2002 article where Seagate was demonstrating it then:

Seagate Technology - Heats get Underway for Seagate Young Innovators Final

But eventually didn't see the future of SSD

Space Lynx · Oct 28, 2020

Metroid said:
We already have a ssd 3.5 100tb, nothing new and here they say 50tb by 2026, by 2026, we will have a 1000tb ssd or more. I guess hard drives are bound to die, for now in price they can compete but not for long unless they really deliver something extraordinary.

last i checked a 1 or 2tb ssd is still insanely more expensive than a HDD... that 100TB SSD probably requires a private island amount of wealth. a 50tb hdd will prob only cost 2-3 grand. compared to 50 grand for the ssd equivalent... ssd are not getting cheaper price... people said 8 years ago ssd's would be dirt cheap by now... nope they arent...

Frick · Oct 28, 2020

lynx29 said:
last i checked a 1 or 2tb ssd is still insanely more expensive than a HDD... that 100TB SSD probably requires a private island amount of wealth. a 50tb hdd will prob only cost 2-3 grand. compared to 50 grand for the ssd equivalent... ssd are not getting cheaper price... people said 8 years ago ssd's would be dirt cheap by now... nope they arent...

They are cheaper than 8 years ago and 240GB drives go for <€30.

Metroid · Oct 28, 2020

lynx29 said:
last i checked a 1 or 2tb ssd is still insanely more expensive than a HDD... that 100TB SSD probably requires a private island amount of wealth. a 50tb hdd will prob only cost 2-3 grand. compared to 50 grand for the ssd equivalent... ssd are not getting cheaper price... people said 8 years ago ssd's would be dirt cheap by now... nope they arent...

1tb in 2014 used to be $400 https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/1526-gaming-ssd-buyers-guide-2014 , right now you can buy a 1tb ssd for 90 usd, that is 4 times cheaper which is a lot. You said a "50tb hdd will prob only cost 2-3 grand", right now you can buy a 64tb for 10k, in 6 years from now this 64tb will be around 1k to 2k usd or less.

Pricing - Nimbus Data

ExaDrive NL Pricing Capacity SATA Model # SAS Model # Price ExaDrive NL – 16 TB EDNLT016 EDNLS016 $3,200 ExaDrive NL – 32 TB EDNLT032 EDNLS032 $6,200 ExaDrive NL – 64 TB EDNLT064 EDNLS064 $12,000 ExaDrive DC Pricing Capacity SATA Model # SAS Model # Price ExaDrive DC – 16 TB EDDCT016 EDDCS016...

nimbusdata.com

A 6tb hdd used to cost $420 https://www.anandtech.com/show/8772/seagate-enterprise-nas-hdd-6-tb-review/8, same cost of a 1tb ssd but 6 times more. Right now we have a 18gb hdd for $500, https://www.newegg.com/seagate-exos-x18-st18000nm000j-18tb/p/1B4-00VK-00616, and a $400 4tb ssd https://www.newegg.com/samsung-4tb-870-qvo-series/p/N82E16820147783?Item=N82E16820147783, so to keep in line with price, hdd supposed to be at least 24tb and with a similar price of $400 and pay attention that hdd's nowadays cost much less because they have a heavy competition from ssd's, in that time they had no competition. So if we had no ssd's a 18tb hdd would cost around 3k today.

Space Lynx · Oct 28, 2020

i got a 8tb HDD for 160 bucks 3 years ago... i cant get a 8tb SSD even now for anywhere near that...

kayjay010101 · Oct 28, 2020

lynx29 said:
last i checked a 1 or 2tb ssd is still insanely more expensive than a HDD... that 100TB SSD probably requires a private island amount of wealth. a 50tb hdd will prob only cost 2-3 grand. compared to 50 grand for the ssd equivalent... ssd are not getting cheaper price... people said 8 years ago ssd's would be dirt cheap by now... nope they arent...

SSD prices are plummeting much faster than HDDs. HDDs will probably still be cheaper per/tb in 2026 but I don't think it'll be by much or enough to warrant the cost, hassle, sound, failure rate and lack of speed that HDDs have, unlike today.

shilka · Oct 28, 2020

The Nimbus 50 TB SSD is $10.000 and the 100 TB SSD is $40.000 while the 20 TB HDD is less than $1000 so yes you can get a 50 TB or 100 TB but unless you are a corporation most dont have the money for a Nimbus SSD

If you need to store vast amounts of data and speed matters less than price a HDD is still the best option
For $10.000 i could buy somewhere around 10 to 12 20 TB HDD´s and get 200-240 TB vs the one 50 TB SSD

SSD´s will need to drop a ton in price to become an alternate

rtwjunkie · Oct 28, 2020

tigger said:
Still slower than an average SSD/m2 drive

Those getting a 10 to 20 TB and higher need capacity and affordability, not speed.

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Seagate: 20 TB HAMR Drives Arrive in December, 50 TB Capacities in 2026

AleksandarK

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Space Lynx

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ebivan

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buzzi

Tomorrow

owen10578

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ExcuseMeWtf

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zlobby

Metroid

Proedros

Space Lynx

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Pricing - Nimbus Data

Space Lynx

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