Seagate is introducing 32TB HDDs with HAMR technology this year
Seagate shares new details about its first HDDs based on heat-assisted magnetic recording, a technology that should enable higher disk capacities. The company will initially launch a 32TB Hamr HDD. Larger variants will follow in the coming months and years.
Seagate will share the details during the Bank of America 2023 Global Technology Conference. Seagate’s financial CEO Gianluca Romano says that the next generation of Hamr HDD will have a capacity of 32TB. This HDD has ten platters of 3.2TB each, which are read and written with a total of twenty heads.
A 36TB variant will follow later, which will also have ten platters and twenty heads. The same applies to variants with 40 and 50TB, which will appear further in the future. Seagate says it can increase its drive capacity in this way without significantly increasing costs, because the same number of drives and write heads are used. The company achieves the capacity increases by increasing the maximum capacity per platter.
The HDD manufacturer previously said that it will release its first Hamr HDDs in the third quarter of this year. The company did not share any concrete capabilities at the time, but only said that this drive would have a capacity of ’30+TB’. This means that the 32TB drive will probably be available to the first customers in the coming months. These will probably be hyperscalers. It is the first HDD with a capacity of more than 30TB. Seagate’s current PMR HDDs come with capacities of up to 22TB, although the manufacturer will soon also introduce a 24TB variant.
Hamr stands for heat-assisted magnetic recording. Hamr HDDs have platters made of a stable magnetic material, consisting of an alloy of iron and platinum. This allows the bits to be made smaller, which increases the storage capacity of platters. However, these materials are also harder than those of existing platters, which means they must be heated to 400°C to be able to write on them. For this purpose, HAMR HDDs have write heads with small lasers. Seagate has been working on hamr for over two decades.