Over the years, mechanical hard drives have greatly increased in capacity, without increasing in size. Even the price has changed little. This is due to a succession of technologies to increase the density of data on magnetic platters. As current technologies reach their limit, Seagate is working on something called motion-assisted magnetic recording. heatheat (HAMR).
The manufacturer has just launched a new hard drive using HAMR, called Exos M. It is available in two capacities, 30 and 32 terabytes. This represents 3 terabytes per magnetic platter. Seagate has been working on this technology since 2007, creating a platform it called Mozaic 3+. In addition to the greater capacity, the new drives would have triple the energy efficiency per terabyte, compared to traditional drives.
Presentation of the Mozaic 3+ platform which uses HAMR technology. (In English, enable automatic subtitle translation.) © Seagate
On the way to 120 TB hard drives
Heat-assisted magnetic recording works using a small diode laserdiode laser which heats the magnetic platter area before recording data onto it. This makes the support much more receptive to magnetic effects, allowing reduction in cell size. Seagate emphasizes that there is no problem with heat dissipation, since the operation lasts less than a nanosecond. The first hard drives to use this technology were released in 2021 with a capacity of 20 terabytes, designed for servers. In 2021, Seagate already predicted that its hard drives would exceed 50 terabytes in 2026 and 100 terabytes in 2030, reaching 120 terabytes thereafter.
This isn’t the only 32 terabyte hard drive on the market, as Western DigitalDigital narrowly beat Seagate for the consumer launch of its Ultrastar DC HC690 drive. However, this uses another technology, called perpendicular magnetic recording assisted by energyenergy (ePMR). Neither manufacturer currently displays the price. We will therefore have to wait to see which technology is the most affordable.
