Seagate this week confirmed plans to launch the business’s first 30+ TB onerous drive that makes use of its warmth assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) expertise, in addition to reaffirming its dedication to launch HDDs with capacities of fifty TB and better in just a few years. However earlier than this occurs, the corporate will launch 22 TB and 24 TB HDDs that may depend on perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) and shingled magnetic recording (SMR) applied sciences, respectively.
One Extra Play for PMR and SMR
Numerous vitality assisted magnetic recording strategies, comparable to HAMR, shall be used for subsequent generations of onerous drives for years to come back. However whereas PMR is operating out of steam, it’s nonetheless evolving. Seagate has managed to extend areal density enabled by its PMR + TDMR platform by round 10%, enabling 2.2 TB 3.5-inch HDD platters and thus 22 TB onerous drives that includes 10 of such disks. Moreover, by utilizing shingled recording, these drives can have their capability stretched to 22 TB.
These 22 TB and 24 TB Seagate Exos drives will probably be drop-in appropriate with current cloud datacenter {hardware} in addition to infrastructure, and mustn’t require in depth validation and certification procedures, not like brand-new HAMR HDDs. Because of this, Seagate’s prospects will be capable to deploy such onerous drives pretty rapidly and improve storage density and storage capability of their datacenters.
Seagate is now ramping up manufacturing of its 22 TB onerous drives for datacenters, so count on the corporate to begin their shipments shortly. Seagate just isn’t disclosing when precisely it would formally launch its 22 TB and 24 TB components, however we’d count on them to reach earlier than the corporate introduces its HAMR-based HDDs; so assume Q1 or Q2.
30+ TB HDDs Coming in Q3
The truth is, Seagate has been transport HAMR HDDs to pick out prospects for analysis in addition to inside its personal Lyve storage techniques for some time, however these drives featured capacities akin to these of PMR/CMR HDDs and weren’t out there in enormous volumes. With Seagate’s 2nd era HAMR platform, the corporate goes after larger volumes, however it took the corporate fairly a while to get there. The primary pre-qualification high-capacity HAMR-based HDDs are solely simply now on the point of head out to prospects for analysis.
“We’re assembly or exceeding all product improvement milestones and reliability metrics, and we shall be transport pre-qualification models to key cloud prospects within the coming weeks,” mentioned Dave Mosley, chief govt of Seagate.
In the meantime, business HAMR onerous drives with capacities of 30TB or larger will ship in third quarter of this yr, which is in-line with what Seagate promised final yr.
“Because of this progress, we now count on to launch our 30-plus terabyte platform within the June quarter, barely forward of schedule,” mentioned Mosley. “The pace of the preliminary HAMR quantity ramp will rely on quite a few elements, together with product yields and buyer qualification timelines.”
Initially Seagate will solely supply its HAMR expertise for its highest-capacity choices for hyperscale datacenters, whom want most storage density and are keen to pay premium for the drives and for supporting infrastructure. As yields of HAMR-supporting media and the suitable learn/write heads improve, the expertise shall be utilized for drives with decrease capacities in a bid to chop down their manufacturing prices (fewer disks and heads, decrease the prices). This isn’t going to occur in a single day although, as the corporate wants to extend yields of HAMR drive parts and the HDDs themselves to a snug degree.
“I believe this yr, [the volume of HAMR HDDs] will in all probability nonetheless be comparatively low,” mentioned the top of Seagate. “Then the sooner we are able to get the yields and scrap and all the prices that we are able to management down on the heads and media, then the sooner we’ll be accelerating. I believe that may occur in calendar yr 2024 and calendar yr 2025 will simply proceed to speed up. The very best capability factors shall be addressed, but in addition these midrange capability factors.”
50+ TB HDDs Will Be Right here in a Few Years
Seagate’s launch of its first mass market 30+ TB HAMR onerous drives platform will mark a milestone for the corporate and the entire business. However apparently the corporate has one other breakthrough to share presently. The agency mentioned this week that it had created 5 TB platters for 3.5-inch onerous drives, which presumably entails new media, new write heads, and new learn heads.
“It was practically 4 years in the past to the day that I first shared our lab outcomes demonstrating 3 TB per disk capacities,” defined Mosley. “And in the present day, we now have demonstrated capacities of 5 TB per disk in our recording physics labs.”
For now, these platters are used on spinstands for analysis and testing functions, however platters like these will enable for 50 TB HDDs just a few years down the road. Seagate’s roadmap signifies that such onerous drives will hit the market generally in calendar 2026.
It’s unclear how skinny the brand new platters are. However following present developments of nearline HDD evolution — rising areal density and rising variety of platters per onerous drive — it is not exterior the realm of chance that Seagate will discover methods to combine much more than 10 platters in future drives. By which case Seagate would be capable to hit drive sizes even bigger than 50 TB.
In any case, with ~3 TB platters in manufacturing, samples of ~30 TB HDDs transport to prospects, and 5 TB platters demonstrated within the lab, Seagate’s HAMR roadmap appears to look fairly stable. Due to this fact, count on onerous drives to achieve capacities quickly within the coming years.
