Seagate has been working on Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) technology for over two decades, with the goal of significantly increasing hard drive storage capacities. The basic principle of HAMR is that by heating the magnetic material on a disk, it can hold more data in a smaller area, allowing for denser storage. This process is incredibly fast, taking less than one nanosecond to heat, write, and cool the data. The technology has been under development for years, but Seagate is now preparing to make HAMR-based drives available for wider commercial use, with large-scale customers showing interest.
HAMR technology requires precise engineering, including the addition of a laser diode to the drive head, optical steering, and extensive firmware modifications. These components work together to enable the higher data density that makes HAMR so appealing. Seagate’s Mozaic 3+ platform represents the latest iteration of this technology, with each platter capable of holding 3TB of data. This allows for hard drives with capacities up to 32TB, a significant leap compared to traditional hard drives, offering up to three times the efficiency per terabyte.
Seagate has recently completed qualification testing of its Mozaic 3+ HAMR drives with major customers, including large cloud service providers. This indicates that HAMR drives are close to being released to the broader market. While exact prices are yet to be announced, the Exos M drives, with capacities of 30TB and 32TB, are expected to be among the first to hit the market. These drives will offer a substantial boost in data storage capacity, making them suitable for enterprise applications that require vast amounts of data, such as cloud storage services and AI-driven workloads.
The durability of Seagate’s HAMR drives is another notable feature. The company has conducted rigorous stress tests, claiming that the heads in their Mozaic 3+ drives have survived more than seven years of field use. This reliability, combined with the significant increase in storage density, makes HAMR technology a prime candidate for demanding use cases. AI model training, which requires large volumes of data storage and high energy consumption, is one such area that could greatly benefit from the development of these high-capacity drives.
Seagate is not alone in the pursuit of higher-capacity drives. Western Digital has already released a 32TB drive based on a different technology called energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording (e-PMR), and Toshiba is also working on entering the HAMR space. The competition in the high-capacity storage market is intensifying, driven by the growing need for massive storage in cloud computing and AI applications. While Seagate’s HAMR technology shows promise, its success will depend on its ability to compete with these alternatives in terms of both performance and cost.
