Seagate has launched a groundbreaking 32TB hard drive that uses heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology. This technology uses lasers to heat and cool tiny sections of the disk platter in just one nanosecond. The company has been working on HAMR for 17 years.
It announced last year that it had finally cracked the technology. The new Mozaic 3+ 32TB drives have now entered mass production and will soon be available for purchase. To increase hard drive capacity, engineers fit more data bits onto each disk platter.
This increases the density of bits crammed into each square inch of surface space. More bits on a disk mean more data can be stored. However, as bit density increases, the data bits are closer together.
This can lead to interference in the magnetic direction of the bits due to thermal instability. Seagate’s solution involves manufacturing the disk platter using new materials. This makes the data bits more thermally stable and prevents them from influencing each other.
Seagate’s HAMR technology increases capacity
However, this introduces a new challenge: writing new data onto these thermally stable bits. Seagate’s HAMR approach solves this problem.
A small laser diode attached to each recording head momentarily heats a tiny spot on the disk. This enables the recording head to flip the magnetic polarity of a single bit at a time, allowing data to be written. Each bit is heated and cools down in just one nanosecond.
This means the HAMR laser has no impact on the drive’s temperature, stability, or reliability. Seagate successfully produced a HAMR drive last year and has since made them available to select customers. The Mozaic 3+ drives are now entering mass production.
Western Digital is using a similar technology called energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording (ePMR) to offer its own 32TB drives. This method also heats the platter but uses an electrical current rather than a laser. Currently, these drives are aimed at enterprise customers for data center use.
However, as with all storage technology, it is expected that they will become available to consumers over time.
