back to article You think you're hot bit: Seagate tests 16TB HAMR disk drive

Seagate has been testing a 16TB HAMR hot bit writing disk drive, with 20TB models in its sights. HAMR stands for heat-assisted magnetic recording and it enables higher disk drive capacities by using smaller recording bits. The only practical way Seagate has found to keep the recorded bit's binary value (magnetic state) stable …

  1. Ima Ballsy
    Coat

    New Tag for WD ..

    QUOTE: "Western Digital is using an alternative MAMR (Microwave-Assisted Magnetic Recording) to get to the smaller bit sizes needed for greater-than 16TB capacity levels. ®"

    WD, bringing you the ability to store your files, pop your corn and toast your nuts all in one device!!

    1. Aremmes

      Re: New Tag for WD ..

      Username checks out.

      Or...

      When they said "hard drive" they didn't mean to place it on your crotch.

  2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    Meanwhile, 8TB is still above €250

    Ouch.

    I'd really like to put one on my Xmas list, but at that price it's not going to happen.

    So bring on the HAMRs and MAMRs, so that the PMRs will drop in price until I can get 4 drives at 8TB size for my NAS.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Meanwhile, 8TB is still above €250

      Hard drives are likely to get bigger but not less expensive. This type of tech will raise the minimum cost of production, and the shrinking market mean it is only viable to produce high capacity high cost drives. The old days of selling max capacity drives alongside drives way down in capacity using only a single platter for under 100 <monetary units> are over.

      1. defiler

        Re: Meanwhile, 8TB is still above €250

        This type of tech will raise the minimum cost of production

        Initially, yes, but if it becomes moderately widespread the read/write heads with integrated laser diode will end up becoming a single component. And stop for a moment to think how cheap laser pickups for CD/DVD players are.

        Besides, the companies that really need 20TB drives will be buying them instead of 14TB ones. I'm hopeful, at least.

        Also, right now you can get 8TB drives for £200. It might just now be the manufacturer you want!

      2. Graham Jordan

        Re: Meanwhile, 8TB is still above €250

        Unlikely, they'll fall, they have to. Drive shipments are falling against SD - which in turn are getting bigger and cheaper.

        Survival of the fittest. Do or die. Bitch common' get sum!

      3. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Meanwhile, 8TB is still above €250

        "This type of tech will raise the minimum cost of production, and the shrinking market mean it is only viable to produce high capacity high cost drives."

        And in the meantime, _large_ capacity SSDs continue to halve in price every year.

        For various reasons, large capacity SSDs only need to be 5 times the price of the equivalent spinning media to take their market.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Meanwhile, 8TB is still above €250

          Which is why Seagate will need to get HAMR working so they can start doubling capacity of hard drives every few years to match to what they are doing with NAND. They expect it to be good to at least 100 TB capacities, which should keep it well ahead of SSDs for years to come.

    2. hup hup hoo

      Re: Meanwhile, 8TB is still above €250

      If you've got a crowbar, you can often get USB drives on Amazon for £110-120 (so about €130). Buy two for the €250, open one up to get the drive and use the other as a backup. The 3.5 drives are always SATA inside (no captive USB connectors), never had a problem with one not behaving.

      Used to pay the premium for bare drives when it was 10% or so, but they are closer to 75% more expensive now and (unlike the USB ones) never on offer.

  3. WireBug

    Nope, still not interested

    Offer it to me for free, and I will still say no way...... Seagate, a great drive to give to your enemies mwhahahahahaha

  4. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge
    Trollface

    So dense

    This should really improve HAMR/head and MAMR/gram storage density ratios.

  5. Jan 0 Silver badge

    Isn't it time that this technology entered 7mm, 2.5 inch hard drives? SSDs are fine to put the OS on, but I'd like some massive storage in my laptop.

    1. Sgt_Oddball

      I was thinking the same...

      But different since I've finally bought a server for a home lab and I've now got 2x 8bay sff disk arrays (sff being 2.5") and if you want terabyte numbers be prepaired to buy ssds seems to be the current thinking... But I really, really dont want to pay thousands just so I've got some storage over 4tb or so.

      Either that or I get my hands on a DAS array of 3.5" drives much to the annoyance of Mrs Oddball.

  6. AbortRetryFail
    Joke

    MAMR, MAMR....

    ... doo doooo de doo dooooo.

  7. This post has been deleted by its author

  8. cjcox

    Amazing advances

    Used to be, I just lost 1TB. Now we'll be able to say, I just lost 16TB.

    1. Piro Silver badge

      Re: Amazing advances

      Genuinely surprised to see this kind of tired old nonsense peddled here - backups.

      You always have backups, ideally multiple backups.

      Also, why is 1TB ideal? Don't you remember when disks were under a 100MB, and a several gigabyte hard drive seemed like fantasy?

      I've heard the same thing over and over.. "I'll lose more data per disk"...

      I just see the opportunity to back up even more data in less physical space.

      1. katrinab Silver badge
        Windows

        Re: Amazing advances

        I remember when 1.38MB was an unimaginably large capacity that nobody could ever possibly fill up.

        1. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

          Re: Amazing advances

          1.38 MB was in the awkward position of being more than you could type on a keyboard but not nearly enough to store anything from the analog world. I tried to encode a Jouney cassette tape into an Apple ][ using dithered PWM but it sounded terrible and used an impossible amount of storage. Even today, my digital music archive is littered with CD rips that need to be done over because they used a squealing MP3 codec.

          1. ecarlseen

            Re: Amazing advances

            Even today, my digital music archive is littered with CD rips that need to be done over because they used a squealing MP3 codec.

            I ripped mine to FLAC first and then transcoded to MP3. I’ve re-done the transcoding a few times since as the capacity of my portable devices increased...

            1. Charles 9

              Re: Amazing advances

              That's assuming it was possible to do so originally. At one time, my source material came from a pre-FLAC age where 250MB was uncommon (as was a CPU strong enough to decode MP3 tealtime).

  9. Velv

    Perhaps it’s time to back to bigger disks?

    5.25” form factor anyone?

    1. Ima Ballsy
      Facepalm

      Maybe PUMP the 3.5 up with Cialis, Viagra & Levitra ?

    2. Charles 9

      Physics gets in the way. That's why Quantum dropped the Bigfoot.

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