Storage revolution: Seagate achieves 6.9 TB per platter and makes HDDs of up to 69 TB possible

The race for more space in Data Centers has gained an interesting chapter: Seagate confirmed that it has already built, in a laboratory environment, platters with record density of 6.9 TBdoubling the level used in commercial models in its current HAMR line.

The achievement paves the way for hard drives between 55 TB and 69 TBsomething that until recently seemed distant.

How did Seagate reach 6.9 TB per platter?

The new density level is the result of advanced research involving HAMR (Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording)technology that alters magnetic coercivity using heat at the time of recording.

Basically, it allows you to reduce the size of the grains present on the disk, creating a more compact surface capable of storing more bits per area.

The company’s recent models adopt platters of around 3 TB. By jumping to 6.9 TB, the storage potential doubles without changing the physical format of the HDs.

For comparison, a current 30TB HDD uses ten 3TB platters. With the new discs, the same arrangement could reach unprecedented levels of capacity.

What do the roadmaps reveal about the coming years?

In recent presentations in Japan, company researchers showed that internal simulations have already validated 8 TB platters. The schedule indicates that the next steps will arrive gradually:

• 4 TB platters planned for 2027
• 5 TB platters planned for 2028
• 6 TB platters planned for 2029
• 6.9 TB platters planned for 2030
• platters between 7TB and 15TB projected for 2031 and beyond

From this curve, the company predicts that it will be possible to achieve PetaByte scale drives before 2040, assuming technological milestones progress as planned.

Just to give you an idea:

Direct impact on infrastructure and corporate market

Demand for storage has soared since the explosion of AI models, leading manufacturers to work with lead times of up to two years.

Despite the maturity of SSD technology, HDs remain the backbone of cold storage, day after day sustaining large volumes of data for significantly lower cost per TeraByte.

Therefore, the density jump allows cloud providers, research institutions and companies that deal with massive loads to reduce physical footprint, energy consumption per TB stored and operational complexity.

The industry demands ever-increasing volumes and we need to anticipate this curve with technologies that allow us to grow without reinventing the format of hard drives

HAMR and Mozaic 3+: duo that sustains the advance

The experiments use the combination of HAMR with the ecosystem Mosaic 3+responsible for producing even thinner and more stable surfaces. The technique supports densities that exceed the limits of conventional magnetic recording, which has been stagnant for years.

The metallurgical base of the platters underwent profound changes, allowing the temperature to be raised only at the engraved point, without affecting nearby regions.

In practice, this maintains disk reliability and sets the stage for ever-increasing density levels.

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What’s missing for these HDs to reach the consumer?

Prototypes exist, but they still require environmental validation cycles, durability tests and adjustments in the production chain. That’s why the first HDDs with 6.9 TB per plater will only appear at the beginning of the next decade. Until then, the market will receive intermediate versions that already demonstrate consistent gains.

For ordinary consumers, the expectation is that only the corporate segment will feel the impacts in the short term. Even so, the advance tends to radiate to domestic lines in the following years, as has already occurred in previous transitions.

Fonte: IT Home