Seagate Preparing Its First High-Capacity HAMR Hard Drive

[Nomad76]

Seagate is getting ready to release its biggest hard drive, featuring a 32 TB capacity through new Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) technology; this milestone comes after nearly a decade and a half of anticipation. Seagate first tested HAMR technology in 2007. The company has repeatedly promised that HAMR-based drives would be available within a few years; however, those predictions have been repeatedly postponed until now.

New Exos drives based on the Mozaic 3+ platform have been available in limited quantities for select customers. Now that they are in mass production, Seagate has quietly revealed the product page for its Exos M HDDs. The lineup includes a 32 TB model that uses Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) technology and a 30 TB model that uses Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR). Seagate says its Exos M hard drive has a 3 TB per platter density.



One important advancement is the compatibility of Exos M drives with existing systems. This is critical for widespread adoption. Previous iterations of the Mozaic 3+ HDDs would require new hardware, which would be a major obstacle to upgrading. Details on how the Exos M differs from the original Mozaic 3+ drives remain somewhat vague, as limited technical information is provided on the product page.

This launch marks a significant moment for Seagate, finally bringing to market technology they have been developing for years. In October, rival Western Digital launched a 32 TB hard drive using energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording (ePMR), while Toshiba demonstrated high-capacity hard drives with HAMR and microwave-assisted magnetic recording (MAMR) technology.

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[bonehead123]

Welcome to the world of "new but old but new" & "same but different but same" concepts, hahahahaha

Must be some AI bot thingy making up those marketing names....can you find any more ways to insult our intelligence ????

 

[Daven]

I wonder if the storage density has reached the point where the sustained transfer speeds can saturate the SATAIII bus.

 

[_roman_]

I was not aware of that "HIGH capacity" equals to 32TB with base 10. My data are stored in base 2. (Western Digital HDD 26TB are currently for sale for the end consumer)

My current definition of High capacity are 1 Petabyte or higher.

 

[windwhirl]

32TB with base 10

All HDDs are sold with their capacities using base 10 nomenclature. So 32 TB being 32.000.000.000.000 bytes is what's expected at this point.

I wonder if the storage density has reached the point where the sustained transfer speeds can saturate the SATAIII bus.

Come back in 2026, Seagate said they'd be pushing out 50 TB drives by then.

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

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...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[nageme]

I wonder if the storage density has reached the point where the sustained transfer speeds can saturate the SATAIII bus.

No.

The new drives are actually specced slower than older models:
Exos X24 series (12-24TB) - 285MB/sec (same as IronWolf Pro and others)
Exos Xz series (30-32TB) - 270MB/sec

Something similar with WD:
HC580 24TB: 298MB/sec
HC690 32TB: 269MB/sec

 

[duckface]

eu use hdd with 6tb or 8tb for my games but steam update all day broken my hdd lol

 

[Wirko]

I was not aware of that "HIGH capacity" equals to 32TB with base 10. My data are stored in base 2. (Western Digital HDD 26TB are currently for sale for the end consumer)

My current definition of High capacity are 1 Petabyte or higher.

I understand your definition isn't constant but rather something like 30x the largest HDD in existence (or 8x the largest SSD in existence).