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Seagate HDD Roadmap: 50 TB by 2026, 100 TB by 2030, Then 120+ TB

Accepted submission by takyon at 2021-03-09 11:11:27
Hardware

Seagate: 100TB HDDs Due in 2030, Multi-Actuator Drives to Become Common [tomshardware.com]

Seagate is on track to deliver ~50TB hard disk drives by 2026, ~100TB HDDs by 2030, and 120TB+ units early next decade, according to the company's recently revealed product and technology roadmaps. To hit capacity targets, Seagate will have to adopt new magnetic recording technologies. To ensure the high performance of its future drives, the company plans to leverage its multi-actuator technology more broadly. This tech doubles the performance of its hard drives, and it could become a standard feature on some of the company's product lines.

[...] Today's [heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR)] media is expected to enable drives featuring 80TB ~ 100TB capacity, according to developers. But, for 3.5-inch HDDs with a ~105TB capacity and 5 ~ 7Tb/in2 areal density, new ordered-granular magnetic films will be needed as grains will get very small and tracks will get very narrow. But ordered-granular media is expected to be a relatively short stop before 'fully' bit patterned media (BPM) technology comes into play with an 8Tb/inch2 areal density.

[...] A straightforward way to increase the [input/output operations per second (IOPS)]-per-TB performance of an HDD is to use more than one actuator with read/write heads, and this is exactly what Seagate is set to do. Using two actuators instead of one can almost double throughput as well as IOPS-per-TB performance, which is tremendously important for data centers. Furthermore, doubling the number of actuators also halves the time Seagate needs to test a drive before shipping, as it is faster to inspect eight or nine platters using two independent actuators, which lowers costs.

Previously: Western Digital to Use Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording to Produce 40 TB HDDs by 2025 [soylentnews.org]
Seagate to Stay the Course With HAMR HDDs, Plans 20 TB by 2020, ~50 TB Before 2025 [soylentnews.org]
Seagate Plans 36 TB HAMR HDDs by 2022, 48 TB by 2024 [soylentnews.org]

Related: Toshiba Announces 16 TB and 18 TB Microwave-Assisted Magnetic Recording (MAMR) Hard Drives [soylentnews.org]


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