HAMR HDDs To Debut At 4TB Capacity But Reach 100TB By 2025

Megalith

Megalith

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Heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) is a novel process in which a small laser is used to apply heat to a disk so more data can be written to a standard platter. Some thought this was implausible, but Seagate says they will be introducing them next year for testing. Do you think mechanical hard drives are going to stay relevant thanks to these advancements, or will improvements in SSD capacity make them obsolete?

It seems that shipments of HAMR-based hard drives will start in 2018 after the tests started in 2016 probably end in 2017 and demonstrate whether HAMR tech is ready for mass production or not. To beat the rapid advancement of SSDs driven forward by Samsung, Seagate plans to make the new drives available only to select cloud and hyperscale datacenter customers, and only after that, the technology will move to the wide spread consumer market.
 
That kind of density in a single drive will absolutely still have a place in long term storage where size is a much greater concern than speed.
 
by the time 2018 rolls around a 4TB ssd will most likely be affordable. Resistive memory will bring the price of ssd's down a lot over the next 3 years.
 
darkpaw said:
That kind of density in a single drive will absolutely still have a place in long term storage where size is a much greater concern than speed.
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Think about where SSDs will be at in 10 years. I'll believe 100TB HDD capacity when I see it.
 
In storage technology 2025 is a long long way off. With all the 3D and Xpoint stuff lately, mechanical drives had better get to 100TB before 2025 to stay viable.

While I thought that my 10MB Warp Nine Photon 10 external drive back around 1985 was more than I ever could fill, I've reassessed that position. lol
 
They better figure out a way to get that form factor back down to the standard HDD size, otherwise they're going to have issues moving the first gen drives when they won't even fit in a SAN enclosure and probably most tray loaded 3.5" slots.
 
pxc said:
I remember this tech in 1980s WORM drives. :p
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Ah but the worm drives were in cartridges, i wouldn't mind removable 4TB single platter cartridges for my desktop if they ran as fast as HDDs. One for the wife, one for the kids etc. This is probably closer to those Megnetic Optical disks from the mid 2000s. Apply magnetic field, and it only affects the spot where the laser hits. I think the only problem with those were they were single platter, and poor access times due to the mass of the head. I imagine this will be used for things like Amazon Glacier where access time doesn't matter, and they can use robotic loaders to replace tape.
 
Streiw said:
Think about where SSDs will be at in 10 years. I'll believe 100TB HDD capacity when I see it.
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The 100th is not the issue. The issue is Seagate thinks that a slow mechanical drive can still be of use when ssd density is doubling every 6 months and the price on the memory for them is in freefall... with the way ssd are going we will have 100tb ssd by the time they cart grandpa mechanical with lasers out.
 
Your average goober (myself included) has trouble filling 1TB. Thankfully, I'm not trying to edit HD video or anything though.
 
Still pissed off that HDD prices are so slow to come down in price since 2011. I want to buy more!
 
anthrex said:
Still pissed off that HDD prices are so slow to come down in price since 2011. I want to buy more!
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Big data keeps prices slightly inflated. They aren't that expensive honestly.

I don't believe we will see these drives, I think Seagate created something that looked plausible and is trying to drum up investor interest.
 
Lunas said:
The 100th is not the issue. The issue is Seagate thinks that a slow mechanical drive can still be of use when ssd density is doubling every 6 months and the price on the memory for them is in freefall... with the way ssd are going we will have 100tb ssd by the time they cart grandpa mechanical with lasers out.
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SSD's still have a long way to go on price, especially in the enterprise market.
(all prices are based on SATA drives)

Lowest price 1TB consumer SSD is still around $400, mechanical 1TB drives are around $50-$70

A basic enterprise 1TB SSD will run you $800+. Look for a SSD that can handle a heavy write intensive environment and the cost jumps to 2 times that price. Meanwhile an enterprise mechanical 1TB drive is only around $80.

I can buy 4TB enterprise level mechanical drives for around $200, or an 8TB drive for around $600
Nobody currently sells a 4TB SSD, let alone an 8TB enterprise level one.

I have started using SSD's in some laptops at work, but since most of the heavy users have 1TB drives, it's SSD's are still an expensive option.

As much as I'd like to start using SSD's in my servers, I just can't justify the cost. The company is small but has heavy (capacity) storage requirements. There's plenty I can do with existing raid technology, using mechanical drives, to give us the performance we need.

When Enterprise SSD's drop to about 1/4 the current price I'll start looking again.
 
Trimlock said:
I don't believe we will see these drives, I think Seagate created something that looked plausible and is trying to drum up investor interest.
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Just the fact that it's Seagate means that I'll never buy one. I'd never trust that much data to a Seagate drive.
Even if I have a backup, it still takes to long to restore that much data.
 
Trimlock said:
I don't believe we will see these drives, I think Seagate created something that looked plausible and is trying to drum up investor interest.
Click to expand...

Just the fact that it's Seagate means that I'll never buy one. I'd never trust that much data to a Seagate drive.
Even if I have a backup, it still takes to long to restore that much data.
 
nutzo said:
SSD's still have a long way to go on price, especially in the enterprise market.
(all prices are based on SATA drives)

Lowest price 1TB consumer SSD is still around $400, mechanical 1TB drives are around $50-$70

A basic enterprise 1TB SSD will run you $800+. Look for a SSD that can handle a heavy write intensive environment and the cost jumps to 2 times that price. Meanwhile an enterprise mechanical 1TB drive is only around $80.

I can buy 4TB enterprise level mechanical drives for around $200, or an 8TB drive for around $600
Nobody currently sells a 4TB SSD, let alone an 8TB enterprise level one.

I have started using SSD's in some laptops at work, but since most of the heavy users have 1TB drives, it's SSD's are still an expensive option.

As much as I'd like to start using SSD's in my servers, I just can't justify the cost. The company is small but has heavy (capacity) storage requirements. There's plenty I can do with existing raid technology, using mechanical drives, to give us the performance we need.

When Enterprise SSD's drop to about 1/4 the current price I'll start looking again.
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you are waiting 10 years for this laser assisted drive to reach 100 tb we currently have 16tb ssd marketed at enterprise. In 10 years with new tech that will grow exponentially.

Imagine 5 nm self healing memory with a capacity of 256 tb in 5 years. OK maybe not 5 nm and maybe not self healing but I feel that density will be what to expect...

now I ask you in 10 years will a 100 tb spinning disk even be relevant. I doubt it but I feel in 5 years time the price of ssd will drop to that of current spinning disk prices...
 
This average Goober :p has 2 x 1TB Samsung 840 EVO drives and is only using about 60% space of each.

Poseur said:
Your average goober (myself included) has trouble filling 1TB. Thankfully, I'm not trying to edit HD video or anything though.
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To me, HAMR isn't relevant since I currently have no use for any drive larger than 1TB.
 
This is Seagate's marketing department crapping its pants in response to the SSD industry's 3D NANDs. They have to say something to make themselves look relevant to stockholders after the recent SSD news.

Samsung announced the 16TB PM1633a SSD this week. Intel and Micron announced Optane SSDs to be coming out next year built on XPoint chips, which at the moment is at half the capacity of Samsung's chips (but that could change).
 
Interesting, not sure if I'd want to buy this from seagate though but a nice raid 10 with a bunch of these could be fun. :p
 
Galvin said:
by the time 2018 rolls around a 4TB ssd will most likely be affordable. Resistive memory will bring the price of ssd's down a lot over the next 3 years.
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Affordable, but not as cheap as a 4TB drive is now (around $130) electron leakage is starting to become a problem and most companies are focusing more on 3D chips more than shrinkage. Things will probably be figured out long term, but it's unlikely that SSDs will hit a penny per gigabyte in three years, which is likely what a lot of HDDs will be.
 
nutzo said:
Just the fact that it's Seagate means that I'll never buy one. I'd never trust that much data to a Seagate drive.
Even if I have a backup, it still takes to long to restore that much data.
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Yep. This.

You couldn't pay me to use Seagate drives.
 
^^^
seagate can kill a good tech by name association alone. SO SAD
 
Wow, Seagate wasn't impressed with their own high failure rates, so they added a laser to the mix? Laser powered HDD failure!

Seriously though, Seagate is dead to me.
 
not only that but now if the laser fails the drive might still write fine but the data will corrupt itself due to the density being so high.
 
evilsofa said:
Samsung announced the 16TB PM1633a SSD this week. Intel and Micron announced Optane SSDs to be coming out next year built on XPoint chips, which at the moment is at half the capacity of Samsung's chips (but that could change).
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And they didn't announce the price.
I'm sure I could buy a dozen mechanical 4TB drives for a fraction of the price of this unreleased product.

Not to be negative, but it usually comes down to cost, and SSD's still have a long way to go.
 
Data will accumulate to fill the available space. It's the George Carlin theory of too much stuff.
RandomNY said:
100tb? Is there that much Por.. on the internet? :)
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Jaymzkerten said:
You underestimate the power of the porn.
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And people's desire to keep every picture and video of their cats in 4K.
RealBeast said:
While I thought that my 10MB Warp Nine Photon 10 external drive back around 1985 was more than I ever could fill, I've reassessed that position. lol
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When the 1.4 mb 3.5" floppy first came out, I really believed that I could get by without a hard disc, by running the OS on one floppy and transferring all my little programs onto others and switching them out as needed. Wow, the things that being poor will make you try to do.
UrielDagda said:
Then they'll just start making 4k 3D, in-your-face...On second thought... Yuck. :D
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Actually that's not far from the truth. We'll soon have 3D holographic projectors, and those will eat up storage like mad. So yeah, we're going to use up every bit/byte that the storage and memory manufacturers can sell us.
Koncrete said:
If you build it, they will cum...
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Damn, that one is so good I'm going to store it away for future use. Great line!
 
nutzo said:
And they didn't announce the price.
I'm sure I could buy a dozen mechanical 4TB drives for a fraction of the price of this unreleased product.

Not to be negative, but it usually comes down to cost, and SSD's still have a long way to go.
Click to expand...

The point is this: Samsung is selling a 16TB SSD. Nobody is selling a HDD larger than 10TB.

Remember back in the days when SSDs used to be smaller than HDDs? Yeah. That's not happening again.
 
nutzo said:
Nobody currently sells a 4TB SSD, let alone an 8TB enterprise level one.
Click to expand...

SanDisk has had an enterprise 4TB drive for...one or two years now? They said they also have 6TB and soon 8TB, with 16TB by the end of the product line, and with the new changes coming for SSD, that will probably be easier than ever, while still being 2.5" and all these HDDs we are talking about are 3.5".

http://www.sandisk.com/enterprise/sas-ssd/optimus-max-ssd/

Sure, SSD does have a long way to go on price, but look at the price drop just in the past year, as well as capacity growth, and Seagate is talking about having these drives in 2025, ten years is a really long time, and only 4TB in 2018, in two years I see SSD being in the 1-4TB range, maybe not HDD cheap, but you are paying for performance, not just size. Today the biggest upgrade to a computer is a SSD, other than workstation (and some times them as well) and gaming, most users already have more than enough CPU power, and the most noticeable upgrade is an SSD.
 
As others have mentioned, mechanical HDD is losing it's advantage in terms of capacity, which I think is bound to happen as semiconductor can get significantly smaller, and they can be stacked in 3D as well. It's unrealistic to expect mechanical HDD to continue holding an advantage in capacity.

Therefore the only thing it has to offer is cheaper cost per capacity. Which I think eventually will be gone too, as the cost per transistor will continue to go down as well. Until that happens, current magnetic HDD will be able to tide us over, IMO.

So I don't really see the point in Seagate investing in something like this. They can never surpass SSD in terms of capacity as long as they rely on creating physical imprints on a disk to store data. And I'd imagine this will increase the cost of HDD at a time when SSD's are coming down.
 
I am more interested in how they are going to remove the limitations that currently exist in SSDs that force them to look like mechanical drives. They aren't, and forcing them to look like them to the OS is slowing things down for everyone. I did learn about the 16 TB drives from this thread, which makes me want to hold off on any storage purchases even more... I'm looking at upgrading at the end of next year for USB3.1 anyway... in the meantime, my 2600k is doing everything I need it to do. (As is the 670 nvidia card, surprisingly, as WoW doesn't need a lot)
 
They already have addressed that with MVMe and PCIe interconnects.

And while Samsung may sell a 16tb drive next year, it's going to be $5-7,000. It's going to be a while before it hits consumer markets.
 
Poseur said:
Your average goober (myself included) has trouble filling 1TB. Thankfully, I'm not trying to edit HD video or anything though.
Click to expand...

Shit, just my Steam library would fill a 1TB drive if I felt like installing everything.
 
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