Seagate has unveiled its largest hard drive to date – an impressive 32TB capacity in a single unit, enabled by advanced technology that utilizes lasers for ultra-fast heating and cooling of small disk sections.
After 17 years of development, Seagate announced last year that it had perfected heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology. The Mozaic 3+ 32TB drives are now in mass production and will soon be available for purchase.
Seagate elaborates on the challenges of increasing data capacity on disk platters.
To enhance hard drive capacity, engineers aim to fit more data bits, or “grains,” onto each platter — thereby increasing the density of bits within each square inch of the surface. More bits on a disk translates to greater data storage potential.
However, as the bit density increases, the grains become closely packed, to the point where the magnetism of one grain can interfere with its neighbors. This can compromise the thermal stability of the grains at standard temperatures, necessitating the use of new materials that enhance the thermal stability of the grains to minimize interference.
This approach succeeds in stabilizing each bit at room temperature, but introduces a new challenge: how to alter the magnetic direction of these very stable bits to write new data?
The company’s solution was to temporarily heat a minuscule area of the disk, sufficient to allow a single bit to be modified. This HAMR technique was conceptualized back in 2007 and has undergone extensive refinement since then.
To write new data, a tiny laser diode positioned beside each recording head briefly heats a minute area of the disk, allowing the recording head to reverse the magnetic polarity of one bit at a time. This process enables data writing with each bit being heated and returning to room temperature in a nanosecond, ensuring that the HAMR laser does not alter the overall drive temperature or the media’s stability and reliability.
Seagate confirmed last year that it had successfully created a HAMR drive and has since provided them to select clients. The Mozaic 3+ is now ready for mass production.
Tom’s Hardware reports that Western Digital is implementing a similar technology known as energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording (ePMR) to produce their own 32TB drives. This method also employs heating of the platter, but utilizes an electrical current instead of a laser.
Currently, these drives are aimed at enterprise clients for data center applications, but like all advancements in storage technology, consumer versions are expected to emerge over time.
Image: Seagate
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