Seagate is increasing production of 20TB HDD
At the beginning of this year, Seagate said that 20TB hard drives using heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology began shipping to its partners in November last year. At the same time, Seagate has expanded its shipments of Mach.2 technology hard drives using dual drives, but such products are mainly for data centers, fixed partners, and Lyve storage systems.
According to a report from TomsHardware, Seagate said in a recent earnings conference call with analysts and investors that it is increasing the production of unreleased 20TB hard drives. Unlike products that use HAMR+Mach.2 technology for data centers, these unreleased 20TB hard drives use the perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) and two-dimensional magnetic recording (TDMR) technologies, which may be seen at the end of this year.
In fact, Seagate previously stated that it is currently developing a variety of consumer-grade hard drives with a capacity of 20TB, as well as products using shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology. Compared with the HAMR technology used in data center products, these consumer products are more cost-effective. Seagate CEO Dave Mosley once said that 20TB hard drives with different technologies (PMR, SMR, HAMR, and TDMR) can adapt to the wide-ranging needs of different markets and customers and complement the existing product line.
In addition, Seagate is also increasing the production of hard drives using Mach.2 technology. Previously, Seagate Seagate’s Chief Financial Officer Gianluca Romano said at the 2021 Global Virtual Technology Conference that the second generation of HAMR technology is being developed, and the capacity of the new hard drive may be increased to about 30TB. Seagate believes that HAMR technology is a way to reach a capacity of 30TB or more and is very confident in this.
