After each quarterly financial report is announced, Seagate will disclose a roadmap for the development of mechanical hard disk capacity. Seagate hard disks are currently advancing in two lines, one is conventional traditional magnetic recording CMR, perpendicular magnetic recording PMR, and shingled magnetic recording. SMR, supplemented by MACH 2 dual magnetic arm technology.
Seagate plans to launch 22TB capacity CMR/PMR hard drives in the first half of this year, ten-disk pack, single-disc capacity 2.2TB, and 24TB SMR hard drives.
But this road seems to end here, and it is very difficult to increase the capacity significantly.
The other is the heat-assisted magnetic recording HAMR (also MACH 2), which has been highly anticipated and promoted for more than ten years. In fact, it has been shipped for many years, but it has always been under evaluation.
Seagate’s roadmap indicates that it plans to release HAMR hard drives with a capacity of 30+ TB in the second quarter. This time, it will finally be commercially available on a large scale, but at least the scale within this year is still small, and it may take until 2025 to form a sufficient scale.
At that time, Seagate will also increase the capacity to 40+TB, and by 2026, we will see 50+TB hard drives.
Seagate revealed that the prototype of the 50+TB HAMR hard disk has been completed in the laboratory, and it will be transferred to the prototype stage when the time is ripe.