Seagate Largest Hard Drive

[Eliz Mettert]

Seagatehas officially launched the first ever 30TB hard disk drive - the Exos X Mozaic 3+ - and the largest yet and the good news is, despite the fact that it will initially be targeting hyperscalers and enterprise markets, the drive will be sold to end users and will be readable without specialist hardware.

Ten 3TB platters were used, sporting actual areal density of 1.742 Tb per square inch. There are plans to have higher capacities model either using HAMR (Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording) by itself or SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) with HAMR for hyperscale customers keen to get the best value for money, albeit with caveats. SMR + HAMR may not be readable on consumer-grade hardware.

Seagate confirmed that the drive will have a cheaper cost per terabyte compared to existing models. BS Tech explained that the new drives are based on existing technologies used by Seagate - which would include the chassis, the motors and most of the electronics - which means that the cost of development is much smaller than for a brand new line of products.

30TB drives have been in the pipeline for a while: Seagate had an announcement two years ago and confirmed select customers were testing the drive. Toshiba, another HDD vendor, confirmed it was working on drives of similar capacity. Other capacities that have been confirmed, after Seagate unveiled an Exos 24TB drive, include 32TB and 36TB hard disk drives

D\u00e9sir\u00e9 has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled in website builders and web hosting when DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium."}), " -0-10/js/authorBio.js"); } else console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); Desire AthowSocial Links NavigationManaging Editor, TechRadar ProDsir has been musing and writing about technology during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled in website builders and web hosting when DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the impact of technology on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the last millennium.

"We can use our recent experience, productizing our 20 TB HAMR drive to translate from laboratory demonstrations to products, which puts us on track to deliver 50 terabytes by 2026," said John Morris, Chief Technology Officer of Seagate. "We have drive technologies planned which will enable long term HAMR growth and a path to over 100 TB devices. And hard disk drives will continue to service the needs of mass capacity storage with the most optimal, total cost of ownership for the next decade and beyond."

"As we approach the maximum useful capacity of PMR technology, each successive drive increases by 1TB or 2TB at a time," said Jeff Fochtman, Seagate's SVP of Business and Marketing at the company's Analyst Meeting. "With HAMR technology, it allows us to jump in steps of 4 terabytes, 6 terabytes, or even 10 terabytes at a time."

"We see an opportunity to scale this design space with granular media into the range of 4 Tb/inch2 to 6 Tb/inch2, at which point we plan to add patterning in one dimension through the use of ordered grain media," said Morris. "This, we expect to be a steppingstone in media to open up the range of 5 Tb/inch2 to 7 Tb/inch2. Then we will transition to fully patterned media to open up densities to 8 Tb/inch2 and even higher. With the areal density CAGR just introduced, we have a path to 10TB per disk by 2030. This then represents our outlook for technology limits over the next 10 to 15 years."

Increasing the capacity of hard drives is extremely important to keep them competitive with solid-state drives, but in a bid to stay relevant for operators of cloud datacenters, HDDs also need to improve sequential and random performance.

Sequential performance of hard drives surges along with areal density, so we see gradual HDD performance bumps every year. But as the capacity of a drive increase, the random IOPS-per-TB performance drops, which requires operators of large datacenters to mitigate this with caches to maintain their Quality-of-Service, which means additional costs.

"A notable benefit to dual actuator technology standardization is that it drastically cuts down test time, and therefore, hard drive production time is greatly reduced," said Fochtman. "This is a benefit we're looking forward to recognizing on the cost side of the business."

There are about a dozen of customers that already use Seagate's Mach.2 PMR-based HDDs in their datacenters, although these drives do not have a commercial branding. Eventually, the company plans to make Mach.2 HDDs available to other clients, yet the company does not disclose when this is set to happen. However, the manufacturer is poised to use its Mach.2 technology more broadly once its drives hit capacities of above 30 TB, as drives with one actuator will not have sufficient performance, and a one-actuator design would increase the total cost of ownership.

"Although Mach.2 is ramped and being used now, it is also really still in a technology-staging mode," said Fochtman. "When we reach capacity points above 30 terabytes, it will become a standard feature in many large data center environments."

Speaking of TCO, Seagate is confident that hard drives will remain cost-effective storage devices for many years to come. Seagate believes that 3D NAND will not beat HDDs in terms of per-GB cost any time soon and TCO of hard drives will remain at competitive levels. Right now, 90% of data stored by cloud datacenters is stored on HDDs and Seagate expects this to continue.

"We believe that the TCO for hard disk drives and SSDs will stay approximately in equilibrium," said Morris. "Both SSDs and hard disk drives will continue to improve their value proposition, and storage demand for both will continue to grow. They are both critical enabling technologies for the growing datasphere, and their synergistic relationship in the data center infrastructure will persist."

The company knocked off the new previous first place holder, Western Digitals Gold 24TB hard drive, with its recently launched Seagate Exos X Mozaic 3+ that set a new standard of 30TB with ten 3TB platters. Reports indicate the new hard drive uses new technology that enabled Seagate to squeeze more platters into the drive, enabling an impressive 1.742 TB per square inch. Notably, the drive features a 12-nanometer integrated controller that improves its efficiency by 3x compared to previous generations.

If you are wondering about cost, Seagate has confirmed to TechRadar that the drive will be cheaper compared to existing models, as the cost of development has been reduced due to Seagate taking advantage of existing technologies used in previous generation models. TechRadar proposes an approximate cost of $15 per Terabyte of storage, which would make the Exos X Mozaic 3+ a $450 hard drive, quite a bargain if you are just looking for an intense amount of storage.

Jak joined the TweakTown team in 2017 and has since reviewed 100s of new tech products and kept us informed daily on the latest science, space, and artificial intelligence news. Jak's love for science, space, and technology, and, more specifically, PC gaming, began at 10 years old. It was the day his dad showed him how to play Age of Empires on an old Compaq PC. Ever since that day, Jak fell in love with games and the progression of the technology industry in all its forms. Instead of typical FPS, Jak holds a very special spot in his heart for RTS games.

I was given the specifications for the additional 2 hard drives, and sold 2 Cables, and told to buy an Carrier for one of the bays, and was told that the screws were in the machine (they were not, but, fortunately, I had screws from an old repair kit).

But, I was told something odd. I was told, but several of the Dell Reps that Windows 10 would not support more than a total of 4TB in the machine. That did not sound correct. I tried to find out if it was a limitation of the XPS 8930, but they all insisted that it is a limitation of Windows. (obviously there are Windows machines that run a lot more than 4TB, but what was I to do?).

So, now I am looking at the XPS 8940 with dual drives pre-installed, each 2TB. That would mean that I have 4TB in the XPS 8940 on delivery. The manual shows 2 2.5" bays empty. I would like to install 2 more hard drives. I was hoping that Dell Support might be more informed/educated by now. But, again, this week, I have gone through the same torture. Not only were my questions not answered, but I was sent links that do not work, and I was told incorrect specifications as to the sizes of the bays, even though I was showing them the page on the manual! I spoke to Customer Support (for purchase) & the Parts Departments. I am unable to ask these questions of Technical Support, because the dell system demands a Service Tag first. And, none of the Dell Reps that I spoke to would access their supervisors (always in a meeting) or access technical support. I wanted to buy the XPS 8940 and buy the 3rd &4th hard drives at the same time.

1) What is the total capacity of all hard drives that can be installed in the XPS 8940? Is it 4 drives at 2TB each, equally a total of 8TB of capacity? What can the machine handle? Can I put 3 drives each of 2 TB and 1 of 4TB = 10TB? Can I go larger? Am I forced to go smaller?

1) The Setup and Specifications indicate the 3.5" drive capacity is 'up to 2 TB'. I think that larger drives will work. The specs for the XPS 8930 indicates 'up to 4 TB' but in this forum post, one user was able to get a 10 TB drive to work and in another post a user got 8 TB drives to work..

But, since many Dell reps told me that the 'system' could not handle more than a total of 4TB, I am concerned. And, I would like to know if the XPS 8930 or XPS 8940 have any specific limitations to overall Hard Drive Capacity. As it is, sometimes my XPS 8930 sometimes sticks, I mean, suddenly the mouse will disappear, and then it needs several seconds before it recoups. The last thing that I would like to do is spend $ on hard drives, that will not work properly or slow the system down or crash the system, because of some configuration of the XPS 8930 & XPS 8940 that I am not informed about.

3a8082e126