Seagate has been working on hard drives for some time, which it calls second-generation Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) technology. The company is using the new HAMR technology for traditional hard drives and plans to launch the first 32TB capacity model this year and the 40TB capacity model in 2024.Seagate’s 32TB HAMR HDDs are coming
Seagate sees HAMR technology as the next step for high-capacity drives built on magnetic recording technology. Essentially, HAMR is an improvement on what we’ve seen in magnetic technology for decades, allowing all bits of data to be packed smaller and more densely than ever before. The benefit is that it can remain magnetically and thermally stable.
The data bits are heated and cooled within a nanosecond so they are not adversely affected by the HAMR laser. Seagate states that the laser does not affect the temperature or reliability of the drive. It is expected to be one of the key enterprise hard drive technologies for the next decade and will undoubtedly reach the end consumer as well.The first commercial release of Seagate’s 32TB HAMR drive is expected in Q3 2023, and the 40TB drive in 2024. Seagate said it also has a 50TB model that is under testing in its labs, but it will be released in 2025. Interestingly, however, the 32TB model contains the same number of disks and heads as current 20TB HDDs using legacy PMR technology. Although Seagate has turned to HAMR, it will continue to launch conventional magnetic drives with 24TB and 28TB HDDs based on legacy technology that will soon be available.
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