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posted by martyb on Thursday November 09 2017, @06:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the hammer-hamer-mamer-mammer dept.

Western Digital recently announced plans to use Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording (MAMR) to build its next generation of hard disk drives instead of Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR). WD promised that initial drives will ship in 2019, with 40 terabyte drives available by 2025.

In response, Seagate has reiterated its plans to produce HAMR hard disk drives in the near future. The company says that its first HAMR drives will ship around 2018-2019 (40,000 have already been built and are being tested by leading customers), at capacities of 16 TB or more. From there, Seagate expects to develop drives storing around 50 TB "early next decade", and eventually drives with capacities of up to 100 TB by combining HAMR with bit-patterned media and two-dimensional magnetic recording (PDF):

HDD technology has become somewhat boring. Innovation has slowed, but that's largely because we've reached the limits of PMR (Perpendicular Magnetic Recording), which is the key underlying HDD recording technology. Over the last two years, we've seen a few interesting new technologies that let us cram more bits into the same old 3.5" HDD, such as SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording). Unfortunately, the new tech comes with slower performance and often requires radical system changes if you want to unlock the full performance. That isn't worth the small capacity improvement unless you're deploying tens of thousands of HDDs.

[...] WD's MAMR relies largely upon proven technologies, which is a plus, but Seagate claimed that it's already producing the more exotic HAMR drives on the same production lines as its existing PMR-based drives. It also said that it has already built a strong supply chain for the new materials.

Both WD and Seagate have solid arguments for their chosen technologies, but the market will determine the winner. Both technologies will undoubtedly provide similar characteristics to today's HDDs, such as endurance, reliability, performance, and power specifications, so cost will be the true differentiator. As always, cheap and good enough will win. The HDD industry settled on PMR recording in 2005, and all three big vendors continue to use the same underlying technology. The move to two different technologies should make for a more exciting HDD future. Seagate plans to provide an update on its progress in early 2018.

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


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @06:45AM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @06:45AM (#594474)

    When I backup my computer I simply rsync all its files. I keep meaning to organize all my backups, de-duplicate them, etc,,, Instead when the drive fills up I buy a new one, copy everything over, and then keep syncing. Sounds like I'll never be pressured to clean up my digital hoards.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday November 09 2017, @07:17AM (4 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday November 09 2017, @07:17AM (#594484) Journal

    Write speeds are not scaling to capacity at all, so it's going to take longer and longer to move the growing pile of files, unless your hoard isn't growing that much each time and is filling a smaller % of each new drive.

    Top SSD capacity has already blown past what HDDs can achieve in the next ten years, and will probably hit 1,000 TB in a 3.5" enclosure before long. But if we believe WD, Seagate, and analysts, HDDs will continue to remain competitive on $/TB.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @08:11AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @08:11AM (#594505)

      People have been saying that for years, but every time I upgrade my system, SSD sizes seem to be several generations behind.

      I recently upgraded from a 1TB drive to a 4 TB drive, and while I was comparing prices, I checked SSDs also. I could get 250GB, maybe even 500, but anything above that I would have to pick a server drive adding at least one zero - and I still don't even think they had anything in the 4TB range.

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Thursday November 09 2017, @08:28AM

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday November 09 2017, @08:28AM (#594516) Journal

        The products in the summary will almost certainly be sold to datacenters first, like today's top-of-the-line helium-filled 14 TB hard drives.

        A 15 TB SSD [computerworld.com] has been shipping for over a year and a half now. It was originally priced at $10,000.

        32 TB [zdnet.com] and 60 TB [arstechnica.com] SSDs exist and are probably around somewhere. 100 TB [theregister.co.uk] and 128 TB [soylentnews.org] SSDs have been announced. So SSDs have blown past hard drives in terms of capacity and by the time HDDs reach 50 TB, SSDs could be past 1,000 TB. QLC NAND is replacing TLC NAND, layers are increasing, and dies are getting stacked. All at once. The petabyte barrier will be broken, even in the 2.5" format.

        The largest consumer-oriented HDDs on the market are 12 TB [soylentnews.org].

        Consumers can buy Samsung's 4 TB 850 EVO for about [amazon.com] $1,550 [newegg.com]. With 1 TB SSDs [newegg.com] around $270, that purchase would not make a lot of sense for most people. 8 TB consumer SSDs are probably not far behind, but it could take 1-2 years and a new generation of 3D QLC NAND before anyone considers launching a consumer-oriented 8 TB SSD.

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    • (Score: 2) by richtopia on Thursday November 09 2017, @04:50PM (1 child)

      by richtopia (3160) on Thursday November 09 2017, @04:50PM (#594695) Homepage Journal

      When Seagate's CEO Stephen Luczo announced the intention to sell HAMR drives in 2018, he also recognized that competing with SSDs are a losing battle:

      “By this time next year, we anticipate less than 10% of our HDD technology portfolio will be exposed to competing flash devices,” said Mr. Luczo.

      Yes, times have been and will be tough for the spinning disc manufacturers. However they realize they have to adapt to the market going forward and it sounds like they are making decisions to ensure they provide a unique, competitive solution.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @07:18AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 09 2017, @07:18AM (#594485)

    one day i'm leaving midget porn on an unencrypted isolinear chip so i can troll my grandchildren when they're looting my treasures - Surprise, Motherfuckers!

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday November 09 2017, @06:28PM

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Thursday November 09 2017, @06:28PM (#594745) Journal

    You can use a small Bash script and the --delete and --link-dest switches in rsync to do incremental backups. I use a ~10 line script to do this over SSH for some commercial clients on their LANs, after having the machines exchange SSH keys. Basically, the script makes a temp directory, copies everything into it, datestamps it, and then repeats the process, with each subsequent run comparing what's in the temp dir (--link-dest switch points at it) with what's to be backed up. This forces rsync to make hard links rather than full copies, so subsequent runs take up virtually no space for already-existing stuff.

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...