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takyon writes:

HGST, a division of Western Digital, has announced its second 10 terabyte helium-filled hard drive. The Ultrastar Archive Ha¹⁰ , announced back in June, was a shingled magnetic recording (SMR) drive. Now HGST has launched the Ultrastar He¹⁰, a 10 TB helium-filled HDD using traditional perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR). With a total of 7 platters, each platter stores around 1.43 TB. AnandTech reports:

Hard drives are struggling to reach the 10TB capacity point with traditional PMR technology. While Seagate did announce a few 8TB PMR drives earlier this quarter, it really looks like vendors need to move to some other technology (shingled magnetic recording or heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR)) in order to keep the $/TB metric competitive against the upcoming high-capacity SSDs. As of now, helium seems to be the only proven solution causing minimal performance impact and HGST appears to have a strong hold in this particular market segment.

Ars Technica has some speculation about the price:

There's no price listed for the Ultrastar He¹⁰, but it'll probably cost about £600/$800. The first helium-filled drives were extortionately expensive, but the He⁸ is now down to around £400/$550, which isn't bad for an enterprise drive (these things have a 5-year warranty and other such niceties, too). Seagate's shingled 8TB drive is much cheaper (£170/$200), but you get a shorter warranty and less enterprisey stuff.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

AnandTech interviewed Mark Re, SVP and Chief Technology Officer of Seagate, to talk about plans for upcoming hard disk drive (HDD) technologies.

Although shingled magnetic recording (SMR) lowers write speeds, a number of techniques help reduce the impact, such as banding together SMR tracks into certain zones with perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) zones covering the rest of the drive rather than shingling, or adding more SLC NAND and DRAM cache. Seagate will be expanding its use of SMR to increase density in client drives, not just "cold storage" drives, but will be using partial SMR/partial PMR and caching in order to mitigate write performance issues.

For the moment, Seagate won't be using helium outside of products for capacity-demanding datacenter customers (such as the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 10 TB HDD). The company can reduce fluid flow forces inside air-filled HDDs using purely mechanical solutions. On the other hand, Western Digital has introduced helium-filled drives aimed at consumers and has a marketing name for its technology (HelioSeal).

[Continues...]

takyon writes:

Seagate claims that it has had 12 terabyte hard disk drives "in the field" for "several quarters", and that 14 TB and 16 TB drives are coming soon. The company has a goal of producing 20 TB hard drives by 2020:

The enterprise is also moving en masse to speedy SSDs for high-performance workloads, which recently led the company to halt further development of 15K HDDs. Many analysts opine that 10K HDDs are next on the chopping block. In response, Seagate shifted its production might to more lucrative high-capacity enterprise HDDs, which now account for 37% of its revenue, to leverage the shrinking HDD price-per-GB advantage over SSDs. Seagate recently closed its Suzhou, China manufacturing plant to reduce manufacturing costs, but it simultaneously increased its investments in other facilities to address the challenges of moving from six platters per drive to eight. The net effects of its maneuverings total $300 million in savings per year.

Seagate is essentially retreating into the high-capacity segment, and the company announced that its new 12TB HDDs have already been shipping to key customers for several quarters. Seagate CEO Steve Luczoalso noted that the company would offer 16TB drives within the next 12 to 18 months. Seagate's new high-capacity offerings are destined for data centers, NAS, DVRs, and a booming surveillance market.

Also at Ars Technica and The Verge.

Previously: Western Digital Announces 12-14 TB Hard Drives and an 8 TB SSD

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Western Digital is shipping 12 TB helium-filled hard disk drives containing eight 1.5 TB platters:

Western Digital on Wednesday announced that it had begun to ship its HGST Ultrastar He12 hard drives with 12 TB of capacity. The HDDs are the first drives to employ eight platters, so the fact that Western Digital is now shipping them is important not only for its datacenter customers who need massive storage capacities, but also because the drive represents a significant step forward from a technology point of view.

The HGST Ultrastar He12 is based on Western Digital's fourth-generation HelioSeal technology, which uses eight perpendicular magnetic recording platters with 1.5 TB capacity each. To add the eighth platter, Western Digital had to redesign internal components of its HDDs (including arms and heads) significantly. In addition, the company increased areal density of the platters, which improved the sequential read/write performance of the new hard drives. In particular, Western Digital claims that the HGST Ultrastar He12 has a sustained transfer rate of 255 MB/s, an average latency of 4.16 ms, as well as an average seek time of around 8 ms.

Previously: Western Digital Announces 12-14 TB Hard Drives and an 8 TB SSD
Seagate's 12 TB HDDs Are in Use, and 16 TB is Planned for 2018

Original Submission

takyon writes:

When will the HAMR drop? Supposedly in late 2018:

Seagate last week made two rather important announcements regarding its current and upcoming hard drives. First, the company said that it had shipped 35 million HDDs based on shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology. Second, the manufacturer confirmed plans to launch commercial hard drives based on its heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology by the end of 2018, the first time the company set a precise launch timeframe for such HDDs.

[...] This is not the first time that Seagate has made a HAMR-related announcement, but this is the first time when the company has set a particular launch timeframe for such drives. Previously, Seagate has implied that the first HAMR-based HDDs would feature a capacity of 16 TB, which is a significant increase from 12 TB hard drives due to be released in the coming weeks. Given the fact that data centers cry out for high-capacity drives, it is inevitable that HAMR-based HDDs with increased performance and higher capacities will be in high demand. Keeping in mind that late 2018 (by "late" companies usually mean the fourth quarter) is over a year away, Seagate is not sharing details about experimental deployments of HAMR-based HDDs that may be planned for 2017/early 2018.

An upcoming Western Digital 14 TB 3.5" HDD will store 1.75 TB per platter.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Using a glass substrate instead of aluminum could allow 12 platters to be crammed into a 3.5" hard disk drive enclosure:

Even if many modern systems eschew classic hard drive storage designs in favor of solid state alternatives, there are still a number of companies working on improving the technology. One of those is Hoya, which is currently prototyping glass substrates for hard drive platters of the future which could enable the production of drives with as much as 20TB of storage space.

Hard drive platters are traditionally produced using aluminum substrates. While these substrates have enabled many modern advances in hard drive technology, glass substrates can be made with similar densities, but can be much thinner, leading to higher capacity storage drives. Hoya has already managed the creation of substrates as thin as 0.381mm, which is close to half the thickness of existing high-density drives.

In one cited example, an existing 12-terabyte drive from Western Digital was made up of eight platters. Hoya believes that by decreasing the thickness of the platters through its glass technology, it could fit as many as 12 inside a 3.5 inch hard drive casing. That would enable up to 18TB of storage space in a single drive (thanks Nikkei).

When that is blended with a technology known as "shingled magnetic recording," 20TB should be perfectly achievable.

Toshiba is reportedly planning to release a 14 TB helium-filled hard drive by the end of the year.

Also at Network World.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Western Digital is now shipping 14 TB hard drives. The products use shingled magnetic recording (SMR), which can slow down re-writes:

Western Digital has started to ship its new HGST Ultrastar Hs14 hard drives, promoted as being suitable for cloud datacenters and for hyperscale developments. The capacity increase from its predecessor, the Ultrastar Ha10, from 10TB to 14 TB offers a significant performance improvement. The new 14 TB HDD is based on shingled magnetic recording technology, which is a system that naturally focuses more on sequential write performance. These drives will only be available with host management, which means it will not be available to general consumers, but only to select customers of HGST.

The HGST Ultrastar Hs14 relies on Western Digital's fourth-generation HelioSeal enterprise platform which integrates eight platters and features various internal components specially designed for such hard drives. The new helium-filled HDD has a 7200 RPM spindle speed, a 512 MB cache. and numerous enhancements when it comes to reliability and durability of the drive. As with other HGST enterprise-class HDDs, the Ultrastar Hs14 is rated for 2.5 million hours MTBF and comes with a five-year warranty.

Previously: Western Digital Announces 12-14 TB Hard Drives and an 8 TB SSD
Seagate's 12 TB HDDs Are in Use, and 16 TB is Planned for 2018
Western Digital Begins Shipping 12 TB Helium-Filled Drives with 8 Platters
Seagate Launches Consumer-Oriented 12 TB Drives
Western Digital to Use Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording to Produce 40 TB HDDs by 2025

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Toshiba is sampling a 9-platter, 14 terabyte hard disk drive that uses "conventional magnetic recording", aka the traditional perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) with no shingling:

The new series comes with both 14TB and 12TB disks that wield nine and eight platters, respectively. Toshiba also becomes the only company with a nine-platter drive with 18 heads. Each platter packs 1.56TB of data storage.

Competing HDD vendors (WD and Seagate) have used helium designs for several years, so Toshiba has largely been considered late to adopting a helium design. Toshiba fills the 3.5" drives with helium instead of air and uses a laser sealing process to contain the gas. The helium reduces internal air turbulence from the spinning disk. In turn, it reduces vibration and provides power, performance, and reliability advantages. It also allows the company to use thinner platters, which facilitates the additional ninth platter.

While Toshiba may be the last HDD vendor to market with a helium HDD, the company did it in style. The MG078ACA, which carries a tongue-twisting name because it is destined for the data center, currently weighs in as the densest HDD on the market using conventional recording techniques. That represents a 40% increase in density over Toshiba's previous-gen 10TB models.

[...] Toshiba currently has 24% of the HDD market share according to Coughlin and Associates, which comes in third to Seagate (36%) and Western Digital (40%). The company has been surprisingly resilient and has clawed back market share over the last year. The addition of a class-leading 14TB model should help it gain even more market share over the coming year.

Both drives have a 5 year warranty.

1.8 TB 9th-generation PMR platters are possible and could be used in a 16 TB Toshiba HDD late next year. Will we see 2 TB per platter without the use of HAMR/MAMR or shingles? Combine that with 12 platters (using a glass substrate), and suddenly you can have a 24 TB HDD.

Also at AnandTech. Previous article.

Previously: Western Digital Announces 12-14 TB Hard Drives and an 8 TB SSD
Seagate's 12 TB HDDs Are in Use, and 16 TB is Planned for 2018
Glass Substrate Could Enable Hard Drives With 12 Platters
Seagate Launches Consumer-Oriented 12 TB Drives
Western Digital to Use Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording to Produce 40 TB HDDs by 2025
Western Digital Shipping 14 TB Helium-Filled Shingled Magnetic Recording Hard Drives
Seagate to Stay the Course With HAMR HDDs, Plans 20 TB by 2020, ~50 TB Before 2025

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Seagate BarraCuda Pro 14TB HDD Review: Massive Storage for Desktops

The exponential increase in data storage requirements over the last decade or so has been handled by regular increases in hard drive capacities. Multiple HDD vendors supply them to cloud providers (who get the main benefits from advancements in hard drive technologies), but, Seagate is the only one to also focus on the home consumer / prosumer market. In the last three generations, we have seen that Seagate has been the first to target the desktop storage market with their highest capacity drives. The 10 TB BarraCuda Pro was released in Q3 2016, and the 12 TB version in Q4 2017. Seagate is launching the 14 TB version today.

The Seagate BarraCuda Pro 14TB is a 7200RPM SATAIII (6 Gbps) hard drive with a 256MB multi-segmented DRAM cache. It features eight PMR platters with a 1077 Gb/in² areal density in a sealed enclosure filled with helium. The main change compared to the 12TB version introduced last year is the usage of two-dimensional magnetic recording (TDMR) heads, allowing for higher areal density (1077 Gb/in² vs. 923 Gb/in² without TDMR).

Launch price is $580.