He announced that Seagate is ready for mass production of second-generation HAMR-based hard drives and that the first products will hit the market later in the year. Seagate, one of the leading HDD manufacturers, has announced that its newest HDD platform will be available to consumers earlier than planned.30TB Seagate HDDs are coming
Despite the dire situation the HDD market is currently experiencing, Seagate is trying to stay strong with new storage technologies. HAMR (Heat-assisted magnetic recording) technology, as the name suggests, uses heating in storage. Thanks to this method, a small spot on the disc is instantly heated by the laser attached to the recording head. Thus, the data written on the magnetic plate remains stable, while being smaller and more densely packed than ever before.
On the other hand, Seagate says it is shipping limited quantities of HAMR-supported HDDs to selected customers for testing. Therefore, this technology has almost evolved into its final form. In the first and second quarters of 2023, Seagate still plans to rely on traditional magnetic recording technologies to upgrade HDD capacities.According to Seagate’s estimations, second-generation HAMR-supported HDDs will be released in the second half of 2023. The first HAMR HDDs will only offer 30TB of storage capacity. Seagate also plans to release 40TB hard drives in 2024 or 2025 and 50TB in 2026.
On the other hand, the main problem of HAMR drivers for now is efficiency, and it seems that this will continue for a while. According to Seagate, the market share of HAMR-based HDDs will be quite small in 2023. Major production improvements are expected to arrive in 2024 and accelerate further in 2025. Thanks to the improved efficiency, heat-assisted HDD models will be available at the mid and entry level in the future.
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