Seagate Reveals HAMR HDD Roadmap: 32TB First, 40TB Follows

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Seagate expects its 24TB HDD to be its last PMR product.

Seagate
(Image credit: Seagate)

Seagate this week revealed some of the details concerning its heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology roadmap. The company's first HAMR hard drive will feature a 32TB capacity that will make it competitive for the title of the best hard drive. Meanwhile, the 32TB drive exists alongside Seagate's 24TB HDD, the company's last drive based on perpendicular magnetic recording.

Seagate's first HAMR HDD will use ten 3.2TB platters and will thus offer a capacity of 32TB. The 10-disk platform — which is already used for Seagate's high-capacity PMR drives — will continue to be used for a while as the company's following HAMR drive will feature a 36TB capacity and will pack 3.6TB platters. Next up will be 40TB with 4TB media and the company is already mulling 50TB hard drives featuring 5TB disks that already exist in the lab. The company did not reveal launch timeframes for its HAMR drives, but it once said that they were set to be released in Q3 2023.

"When you go to HAMR, our 32TB is based on 10 disks and 20 heads," said Gianluca Romano, Seagate's chief financial officer, at the Bank of America 2023 Global Technology Conference (via SeekingAlpha). "The following product will be a 36TB and will still be based on 10 disks and 20 heads. So, all the increase is coming through areal density. The following one, 40TB, still the same 10 disks and 20 heads. Also, the 50TB, we said at our earnings release, in our lab, we are already running individual disk at 5TB."

(Image credit: Seagate)

Some of Seagate's HAMR HDDs are already shipping for revenue inside its Corvault systems, though Seagate didn't officially disclose their capacity, but says they rely on its 30TB+ platform. Meanwhile, the company only plans to ship its 30TB+ HAMR hard drives in volume to its hyperscale customers after they qualify them.

Before some of them start using HAMR drives, at least some of the large cloud service providers will deploy the company's 24TB HDDs based on conventional PMR technology. Furthermore, some might even adopt Seagate's 28TB hard drives featuring shingled magnetic recording technology. Meanwhile, these will be the company's final high-capacity nearline PMR HDDs. 

"So, we have a 24TB coming out soon, next few months, you will see it," said Romano. "That is the last PMR product. So I would say [higher] capacity point above 24TB PMR, that is probably 28TB SMR."

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Anton Shilov
Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

8 Comments Comment from the forums
  • newtechldtech
    now imagine writing zeros to such huge capacity
    Reply
  • bit_user
    newtechldtech said:
    now imagine writing zeros to such huge capacity
    Why? You mean to delete your data? Just use encryption and then you don't need to. In fact, they might even be self-encrypting.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware-based_full_disk_encryption
    Many/most SSDs do that.
    Reply
  • atomicWAR
    I am all about higher capacity HDDs. I love my SSDs for games and what not but for my larger data sets like movies/TV shows and my very large catalog of emulated games (most games for most consoles through Wii)...I take all the space I can get.
    Reply
  • atomicWAR said:
    I am all about higher capacity HDDs. I love my SSDs for games and what not but for my larger data sets like movies/TV shows and my very large catalog of emulated games (most games for most consoles through Wii)...I take all the space I can get.

    Same. In addition to being a PC geek I'm also a home theater geek. OLED displays on both.. Atmos sound... etc..
    I have a pretty massive movie library on disc... over 1000 titles. My preferred method of watching is disc over streaming... because disc viewing is the best quality. Still... streaming on demand is super convenient.

    TravisPNW Movie library
    All of them I have digital copies on the PC... be it one included with the movie and downloaded via iTunes or one that I ripped myself with MakeMKV and then encoded with Handbrake.

    Total for the entire collection is currently 5.5TB... with the main backup being a 12TB Seagate internal HDD. I also have 2x 8TB Samsung 870 SATA SSDs with the entire collection on both. One of the drives is used for streaming throughout the multiple TVs in the home and the other is a secondary backup to the HDD backup.

    I just got rid of a 10TB external... it was 5400rpm and with the addition of the new 870 drives I didn't see a need for it any longer.

    16TB NVMe drives for gaming... etc... 16TB SATA for the movie collection as well as other media such as drone footage... photos... etc... and the 12TB HDD.

    I really wanted to go all SSD and dump the HDD but decided against it for now.
    Reply
  • DSzymborski
    Whether or not hard drive manufacturers should report TiB vs. TB is off-topic, so no more of that, please.
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    The only downside I see is that I don't think HAMR technology will be economical to scale down under 20tb for some time due to both the different platters and increased complexity. Even at 20tb a current CMR drive is around $350 and a 16TB is around $200. Even with fewer platters I find it difficult to believe they can deliver HAMR drives under those prices for some time to come.

    That being said even at the datacenter level, even though these drives have been sampling for a while with them, how long will it be before they're as trusted in longevity and reliability as traditional drives in quantities that will replace them?
    Reply
  • newtechldtech
    bit_user said:
    Why? You mean to delete your data? Just use encryption and then you don't need to. In fact, they might even be self-encrypting.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware-based_full_disk_encryption
    Many/most SSDs do that.

    it is not 100% safe .. for sensitive Data , writing zeros is still being used before removing drives.
    Reply
  • Trident1983
    newtechldtech said:
    now imagine writing zeros to such huge capacity
    You mining chia coin with those 40-100TB HDDs soon with a 4090 with bladebit using 192gb of ram and a 4tb pci-e gen 5 ssd as windows os sucks for using more than 26 hdds still?
    Reply