Seagate Plans To HAMR WD's MAMR; 20TB HDDs With Lasers Inbound

[Guest]

Seagate is firing back at WD's MAMR announcement with its laser-infused HAMR (Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording) technology, which uses tiny lasers to increase storage density.

Seagate Plans To HAMR WD's MAMR; 20TB HDDs With Lasers Inbound : Read more

 

[wysir]

Finally, I'll be able to buy my own micro laser. The hard drive wont last under those temps.

 

[simfreak101]

They will still lose to flash in the long run. Samsung is already on gen5 of their flash at 128GB per die; Times 32 dies per package and you are already at 4TB per little black square on a pcb yielding a 128TB 2.5" drive at a fraction of the power usage and less physical real estate with 100x the performance (if not more 😛) If Samsung continues these improvements they should reach near 2x cost premium compared with the new magnetic technologies coming out. Being that they already have a 9x capacity advantage over existing 14TB offerings, they have 6 years to ramp production to get the price parity down.

 

[alextheblue]

Flash will remain too costly to completely supplant HDDs (outside perhaps of typical consumer usage) for the foreseeable future.

Anyway, the Dr. Evil in me is really happy to see Seagates with frickin' laser beams on their heads.

Also, now when they explode they can pew pew lasers.

 

[dcapo25]

What new materials will be required here?

 

[zodiacfml]

HAMR, as mentioned already, can scale at higher capacities. Light simply has a smaller wavelength compared to microwaves. Flash has a better future though where these HDDs will replace magnetic tape drives.

 

[samer.forums]

imagine how much time you will need scanning for bad sectors on that 20 Tera Harddisk ... or how much time you will need to write zeros on it to wipe it out lol ...

having said that , The companies are competing in size and not competing in I/O sadly ... Where are the cheap consumer level 15K RPM drives ? I am waiting for them for decads and they never come.

If they can make 20 Terabytes 7200 RPM Drives , using the same density and smaller platters , they can make at least 6 Terabytes 15K RPM using the same density now .. what is stopping them ? 2.5 inch 15K Consumer level drives please ANYONE ?

the last one who did it was the WD Raptor ... we need Raptor 2 Western Digital , Just DO it .

 

[bit_user]

HAMR, as mentioned already, can scale at higher capacities. Light simply has a smaller wavelength compared to microwaves.

You're missing the point. The lasers/microwaves aren't use write the data, but rather to reduce the coercivity of the recording media. Consequently, the area heated by the laser or affected by the microwaves can be larger than a single track.

Flash has a better future though where these HDDs will replace magnetic tape drives.

"better future"? The challenge for flash would be merely to keep up with the density improvements of HDDs. We're already in a world where you use flash for speed and HDDs for cheap nearline capacity, and that won't change for the foreseeable future.

BTW, I doubt even these HDDs will offer the cheapest offline storage solution. Anyway, 100 GB blu-rays are a true archival medium, if not also the cheapest per GB.

 

[bit_user]

imagine how much time you will need scanning for bad sectors on that 20 Tera Harddisk

True.

... or how much time you will need to write zeros on it to wipe it out lol ...

They could just store encrypted data, like some flash drives, and then you just have to wipe the key.

The companies are competing in size and not competing in I/O sadly

Yes, because that's what flash is for.

If they can make 20 Terabytes 7200 RPM Drives , using the same density and smaller platters , they can make at least 6 Terabytes 15K RPM using the same density now

I doubt it's that simple.

.. what is stopping them ? 2.5 inch 15K Consumer level drives please ANYONE ?

You're nuts. OR a troll, but I'm going with nuts.

the last one who did it was the WD Raptor

I got a sweet deal on a 500 GB Raptor, back in the day. I replaced it with flash, years ago, and never looked back.

 

[bit_user]

The HDD industry settled on PMR recording in 2005, and all three big vendors continue to use the same underlying technology.

There are some SMR HDDs in the wild. I don't know if this is a trend, but I've heard rumors of them even showing up in the consumer market.

IMO, they're good for backup ...and not much else.

 

[WyomingKnott]

Now you will be able to get HDDs "with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads." Dr. Evil will be so happy.

 

[fairportfan]

<blockquote>.. or how much time you will need to write zeros on it to wipe it out lol ...</blockquote>Nah - just run the laser over it once or twice and all the bits will evaporate, since the basis of the process is heating the material above it Curie Point, where magnetic materials lose the capacity to be magnetised.

This is the same process used for recording the Sony MiniDisc of sainted memory - flash-heat the material above its Curie Point with a laser while at the same time imposing a magnetic field with a write head; when it rapidly cools that field is "frozen" in the material.

(The MiniDisc read its magnetic data visually, using the fact that a magnetic field will rotate a polarised laser beam that passes through it, allowing recovery of the data by detecting the plane of polarisation of the reflected beam...)

 

[bit_user]

Nah - just run the laser over it once or twice and all the bits will evaporate, since the basis of the process is heating the material above it Curie Point, where magnetic materials lose the capacity to be magnetised.

This is the same process used for recording the Sony MiniDisc of sainted memory - flash-heat the material above its Curie Point with a laser while at the same time imposing a magnetic field with a write head; when it rapidly cools that field is "frozen" in the material.

That doesn't sound right, or else you'd probably have to slow the rotation rate and would end up erasing adjacent tracks. I think the goal is just to heat it enough to reduce the coercivity of the media.