Seagate is now sampling 36TB hard drives based on HAMR technology

[Alfonso Maruccia]

TL;DR: Seagate was the first storage manufacturer to introduce heat-assisted magnetic recording hard drives to the market and continues to innovate in magnetic storage technology. The company is expanding the capacity of its next-generation storage units, though I/O performance may be a concern for some customers.

Seagate started shipping hard drives with HAMR tech in December 2024, turning a long-awaited technological advancement into a commercial reality. Now, the storage specialist is announcing that even more advanced HAMR drives, with capacities of up to 36 terabytes, are on the way.

The 36TB HAMR drives are being shipped to a select group of customers for testing and validation. Like the earlier HAMR units, these new Exos M drives are built on the Mozaic 3+ technology platform to deliver "unprecedented" areal density. The drives utilize a complex 10-platter design, achieving an areal density of 3.6TB per platter.

According to Seagate CEO Dave Mosley, the company has already reached an areal density of over 6TB per disk in its test environments. The goal, he says, is to further increase the data density to 10TB per platter. Seagate also states that Mozaic 3+ is a highly efficient storage platform, enabling the new Exos M drives to lower the total cost of ownership and reduce energy consumption.

HAMR drives have been specifically engineered to meet the needs of data centers, offering 300 percent more storage capacity within the same physical footprint. Seagate also estimates a 25 percent reduction in cost per terabyte and a 60 percent reduction in power consumption per terabyte. Dell Technologies, an early adopter of the Mozaic 3+ platform, plans to integrate the Exos M 32TB drives into its "high-density" storage products in the near future.

While touted as the cutting edge of magnetic storage technology, the new drives come with a notable caveat that Seagate does not mention in its press release. According to the product page for HAMR drives, the highest-capacity models (32TB and 36TB) rely on shingled magnetic recording (SMR) to achieve their impressive areal density and overall storage capacity.

SMR-based drives use a sophisticated architecture with overlapping data tracks, which can negatively impact write operations. However, this limitation may not be a significant issue for data centers and startups training AI language models, as their primary focus is on storing vast amounts of data rather than frequent or intensive write operations.

As IDC researcher Kuba Stolarski noted, hard disk drives remain a "critical" technology for AI applications and other enterprise-level storage demands. Stolarski highlighted that a significant majority (89 percent) of data stored by leading cloud services is still archived on hard disk drives.

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Seagate is now sampling 36TB hard drives based on HAMR technology

 

[Kashim]

Seagate's CEO admits they already have working platters with 6TB density, which means they could ship 60TB drives in the near future. But of course they're not going to do that. They're going to slowly increase density 2-4TB at a time and milk customers for as much money as possible.

 

[kiwigraeme]

Seagate's CEO admits they already have working platters with 6TB density, which means they could ship 60TB drives in the near future. But of course they're not going to do that. They're going to slowly increase density 2-4TB at a time and milk customers for as much money as possible.

A bit harsh, one thing in optimum conditions with best precision machinery- given all complaints on here about battery tech

Really for Meta, Amazon , Google, MS etc capacity must be only one metric they look at. Others here would know more that me. tb/$ , tb/watt, Uptime/$ - downtime to rebuild , speed/tb - I get these centers are massive so that will help

Personally I go minimum size I will buy for amount of connections my PC has to Tb/$ favouring larger if only slightly more expensive per terabyte - with over riding - reliability data I can find - last time I bought that favoured roughly 18-20Tb , reconditioned from known supplier for $200 or so- as use them as write once mainly

 

[toooooot]

When are we going to get new gen hard drives? 10-year warranty, 10tb for 100 dollars.
They need to be more reliable. I know I am not the only one who keeps a collection of movies at home.
I got 2 Exos drives few years ago. Well, one went bad within weeks. It worked, but so loudly that I should have guessed it was defective. I did not want to use them for this reason because I thought this is how Exos drives sound.
For $230 each, these are not as reliable as they should be.
In this reality, modern drives are not worthy to use outside data centers unless you put them in raid.

 

[kiwigraeme]

When are we going to get new gen hard drives? 10-year warranty, 10tb for 100 dollars.
They need to be more reliable. I know I am not the only one who keeps a collection of movies at home.
I got 2 Exos drives few years ago. Well, one went bad within weeks. It worked, but so loudly that I should have guessed it was defective. I did not want to use them for this reason because I thought this is how Exos drives sound.
For $230 each, these are not nearly enough as reliable as they should be.
In this reality, modern drives are not worthy to use outside data centers unless you put them in raid.

Good points , but case by case basis. personal photos, videos backup , still on original SD cards as well. But movies get some manager software - and see what's lost and rebuild better, bigger stronger , as normally add in more soundtracks or atmos , or go to remux.

Still have more movies than can watch
If comics, ebooks , pdfs backup as not much space
If not a pirate Arrr - then should have 4K , Burays if didn't just rip and sell

I mean even if HQ 18TB - each movie 30TB that's 500 odd - probably worth a cheap a standalone cheap WD , Seagate easybook USB or whatever called bought on special

 

[NumberNine]

I have 16TB of all-flash storage and I am never going back. Spinning disks are for backups only.

 

[yRaz]

I have 16TB of all-flash storage and I am never going back. Spinning disks are for backups only.

What in the world do you need 16TB of flash for? Even I only have 4TB of flash in my main machine and 18TB of HDD in my NAS

 

[Vkiwi2]

When are we going to get new gen hard drives? 10-year warranty, 10tb for 100 dollars.
They need to be more reliable. I know I am not the only one who keeps a collection of movies at home.
I got 2 Exos drives few years ago. Well, one went bad within weeks. It worked, but so loudly that I should have guessed it was defective. I did not want to use them for this reason because I thought this is how Exos drives sound.
For $230 each, these are not as reliable as they should be.
In this reality, modern drives are not worthy to use outside data centers unless you put them in raid.

You can run them in a nas, yes the exos are noisy, but fast, the WD reds, you need to make sure its cmr. have reds in my nas and exos for my cold offsite backup