HDD capacity growth has entered the fast lane

Mozaic 3+ (Mozaic 3+) technology platform integrates a number of innovative technologies, and the thermal assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) used by Exos M is also a long-awaited technology in the industry, the two technologies are supported by the same data center space to increase storage capacity by 300%, reduce the cost per TB by 25%, and reduce the power consumption per TB by 60%.

The Exos M HDD achieves a capacity of 36TB with 10 discs. Let Seagate become the only manufacturer that can increase the hard disk density to 3.6TB, Seagate also mentioned that the future is even expected to achieve a super capacity of 10TB per disc, which means that there may be 100TB hard disks in the near future, if the future with 11 discs, 110TB is not a dream.

At the beginning of 2024, Seagate released the Mozaic 3+ technology platform, announcing that the HDD came to the era of 30TB+. At the same time, Seagate also announced the upcoming release of the magic box 4+ (Mozaic 4+) and the magic box 5+ (Mozaic 5+), HDD capacity growth into the fast lane.

IDC research shows that 89% of the data in the data centers of the world's leading cloud vendors is based on hard disk storage. Cloud vendors will be more aggressive in adopting large-capacity hard drives. Seagate said it is currently offering 32TB Exos M drives in bulk to a cloud vendor. Seagate, meanwhile, has begun offering samples of Exos M hard drives with capacities up to 36TB.

Dell is the first to plan to adopt Mozaic 3+

As a leading storage vendor, Dell is the first to plan to adopt the HAMR-based Mozaic 3+ technology platform and will soon integrate Exos M 32TB hard drives into its future high-density storage systems. May be used in PowerScale(Isilon) as well as unstructured storage platforms such as ObjectScale and ECS.

Dell experts said:“Dell PowerScale, powered by Seagate's Mozaic 3+ technology, plays a crucial role in supporting AI application scenarios such as retrieval enhanced generation (RAG), inference and agent workflows.”

The 60TB hard disk is coming soon

Dr. Dave Mosley, CEO of Seagate, said:“Seagate is currently the only hard drive manufacturer in the world capable of mass producing a single disk density of 3.6TB.”In addition, Seagate has successfully verified a capacity of more than 6TB in a single disc in a test lab environment, meaning that 60TB discs will also be available in the foreseeable future.

A Seagate spokesperson said CMR is a traditional record, SMR is a shingle record, HAMR, on the other hand, is a technique that uses heat to write data, which is different from previous methods. With HAMR technology, Seagate will still use CMR and SMR technology to produce hard drives.

However, Seagate also said that HAMR can allow HDD HDD to achieve a higher cost advantage, so that HDD HDD in the face of SSD, still maintain an important market position. Some estimates show that even after the 122TB SSD is launched, The price of 36TB HDD is also 4-5 times lower than that of SSD, and the cost advantage is still obvious.

Due to high demand on the enterprise side, this 36TB drive may not be sold in the retail channel. More large capacity hard drives are usually only available through partners or system integrators.