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Western Digital to Use Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording to Produce 40 TB HDDs by 2025

posted by martyb on Saturday October 14 2017, @07:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the platter-size-and-count? dept.

takyon writes:

Western Digital is planning to use Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording (MAMR) instead of Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) to produce hard drives with capacities of up to 40 terabytes by 2025:

WD has selected MAMR (Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording) as its new HDD recording technology, which the company claims can enable up to 40TB HDDs by 2025. WD's rapid transition to MAMR is somewhat surprising, but the technology has been in development for nearly a decade. It certainly stands in contrast to Seagate's plans for using the laser-assisted HAMR (Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording) as the route to higher storage density.

The transition to the new recording process isn't immediate, but WD plans to have initial products shipping by 2019, and it had working demo models this week at its event in San Jose. The improved recording technology is needed to keep HDDs cost-competitive with the surging SSDs, but economics dictate that SSDs will never replace HDDs entirely, especially as the volume of data continues to grow exponentially; WD predicts that HDDs will account for ~90% of data center storage in 2020.

The technology announcement reportedly took the storage industry by surprise and MAMR doesn't have the same issues that have delayed HAMR:

WD pointed out that MAMR requires absolutely no external heating of the media that could lead to reliability issues. The temperature profiles of MAMR HDDs (both platters and drive temperature itself) are expected to be similar to those of the current generation HDDs. It was indicated that the MAMR drives would meet all current data center reliability requirements.

Based on the description of the operation of MAMR, it is a no-brainer that HAMR has no future in its current form. Almost all hard drive industry players have a lot more patents on HAMR compared to MAMR. It remains to be seen if the intellectual property created on the HAMR side is put to use elsewhere.

Will we have 100 TB by 2032?

Also at BBC, PetaPixel, and Engadget. WD Technology Brief.

Previously: AnandTech Interview With Seagate's CTO: New HDD Technologies Coming
Seagate HAMR Hard Drives Coming in a Year and a Half
Glass Substrate Could Enable Hard Drives With 12 Platters

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by mendax on Sunday October 15 2017, @10:03PM (1 child)

    by mendax (2840) on Sunday October 15 2017, @10:03PM (#582774)

    Will spinning rust be in vogue by the time 2025 rolls around? Solid-state static RAMs are getting cheaper all the time, and more reliable. And they are one hell of a lot faster.

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 16 2017, @07:23AM

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Monday October 16 2017, @07:23AM (#582923) Journal

    ​https://www.anandtech.com/show/11925/western-digital-stuns-storage-industry-with-mamr-breakthrough-for-nextgen-hdds [soylentnews.org]

    Hard drives may be on the way out for client computing systems, but, they will continue to be the storage media of choice for datacenters. The Storage Networking Industry Association has the best resources for identifying trends in the hard drive industry. As recently as last year, heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) was expected to be the technology update responsible for increasing hard drive capacities.

    One of the common misconceptions amongst readers focused on consumer technology relates to flash / SSDs rendering HDDs obsolete. While using SSDs over HDDs is definitely true in the client computing ecosystem, it is different for bulk storage. Bulk storage in the data center, as well as the consumer market, will continue to rely on mechanical hard drives for the foreseeable future.

    The main reason lies in the 'Cost per GB' metric.

    Home consumers are currently looking at drives to hold 10 TB+ of data, while datacenters are looking to optimize their 'Total Cost of Ownership' (TCO) by cramming as many petabytes as possible in a single rack. This is particularly prevalant for cold storage and archival purposes, but can also expand to content delivery networks. Western Digital had a couple of slides in their launch presentation yesterday that point towards hard drives continuing to enjoy this advantage, thanks to MAMR being cost-effective.

    https://images.anandtech.com/doci/11925/02_-_flash-hdd-cpgb.png [anandtech.com]

    Despite new HDD technology, advancements in solid state memory technology are running at a faster pace. As a result SSD technology and NAND Flash have ensured that performance enterprise HDDs will make up only a very minor part of the total storage capacity each year in the enterprise segment.

    https://images.anandtech.com/doci/11925/03_-_ssd-hdd-dc.png [anandtech.com]

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