Seagate began selling commercial Exos series HAMR hard drives
Seagate recently disclosed in this quarter’s analyst and investor conference call that it has already reaped benefits from its latest Exos Corvault system, equipped with Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) technology hard drives. A quarter ago, in a similar conference call, Seagate announced the initiation of shipments of 30TB+ HAMR hard disk samples to its cloud data center customers.
As reported by Seeking Alpha, Seagate successfully delivered the first Exos Corvault system featuring a HAMR hard drive in June as planned. This innovation has been adopted by paying customers, and it’s anticipated that these systems will gain wider applications by the end of 2023.
Dave Mosley, Seagate’s Chief Executive Officer, stated that more large-capacity HAMR hard drives have been dispatched for testing. Simultaneously, Seagate has implemented cost-cutting measures, reducing production by approximately 25% compared to peak output, to better adjust to supply-demand equilibrium and enhance profitability. Currently, the product development and certification of the 30TB+ HAMR hard drives are progressing smoothly. Mass production is expected to commence in early 2024, and Seagate is preparing qualification certification for more customers, including workload-related tests for enterprise OEMs.
Furthermore, Mosley disclosed that the development of Seagate’s last Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) product is nearing completion, expanding the hard drive capacity to over 20TB, precisely 24TB. For those clients reluctant to utilize HAMR hard drives, Seagate offers alternative solutions, including 24TB+ models based on PMR+TDMR and SMR+TDMR configurations, scheduled for release by the end of this year.
