From ExtremeTech: The hard drive world is about to enter unchartered territory as the first 30TB heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) drives have finally arrived. Seagate has been locked in a race to 30TB with its rival Western Digital for years and has now eclipsed it by a hair as WD announced 28TB drives in November. Seagate is also announcing 32TB shingled magnetic recording (SMR) drives, which offer lower performance than traditional drives.
Seagate's race to 30TB has been brewing for several years. In mid-2022, the company said it expected to begin shipping 30TB HAMR drives in 2023, which it eventually did, but only in small quantities for testing. This week's announcement makes the drives officially available to hyperscale data centers and includes a page for the new drives on its website. The 30TB model uses 10 3TB platters, and Seagate says it has 5TB per platter "on the horizon" as well.
In addition to using HAMR, these new drives also employ several new technologies that allow such high aerial densities. The physical media uses an iron-platinum superlattice structure, which Seagate says increases magnetic coercivity. This is important when the individual bits are continually reduced in size, as they can become unstable. Additionally, the HAMR technology uses a plasmonic writing mechanism that employs a nanophotonic laser to heat a tiny area of the media. According to Blocks & Files, it can instantly heat a 35nm area on the media to over 400C.
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