The drives are based mostly on Seagate’s Mosaic 3+ platform, which “incorporates Seagate’s distinctive implementation of HAMR to ship mass-capacity storage at unprecedented areal densities of 3TB per disk and past.”
Seagate’s press launch is targeted totally on the massive drives’ suitability for AI-related knowledge storage—”AI” is talked about within the physique textual content 21 instances, and it is not a protracted launch. But clearly, they will be helpful for any form of storage the place you want as many TB as potential to match into as small an area as potential.
Although most shopper PCs have moved away from hard drives with spinning platters, they nonetheless present the most effective storage-per-gigabyte for enormous knowledge facilities the place ultra-fast efficiency is not essential. Huge knowledge middle SSDs are additionally available however at a lot greater costs.
Seagate competitor Western Digital says that its first HAMR-based drives are due in 2027, although it has managed to attain 32TB utilizing SMR expertise. Toshiba is testing HAMR drives and has stated it would pattern some drives for testing in 2025, nevertheless it hasn’t dedicated to a timeline for public availability.