Seagate has officially shipped out its first batch of Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording HDDs, or HAMR for short. These new platter drives have a starting storage capacity of up to 30TB and will first see action in data centre solutions.
What is HAMR, we hear some of you asking. To put it simply, the technology basically uses laser diodes, individually attached to each recording head, to briefly heat up a tiny area on each disc within the HDD. In doing so, the heated area becomes smaller and dense, allowing it to store more space inside the affected area.
To be clear, Seagate’s production of HAMR HDDs have been expected, and for quite some time too. The company has spoken about the technology since 2002, while test productions of the product only began as far back as 2018. For another matter, it’s the company’s way of saying that traditional platter drives are far from being driven into the grave. At least, for now.
Seagate says that it expects to ramp up storage production of HAMR HDDs within the early parts of next year. However, it still plans on launching at least one more generation of Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) and Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) drives with capacities of 24TB within a single storage unit as well.
(Source: Seagate, Techspot, Hot Hardware)
