Hard drives have lasers now, in a bid to increase capacities to 100TB within the next few years.
NOW JUST THREE MANUFACTURERS of hard drives are left, so competition is spirited. Seagate is shipping qualification samples of its new 30TB drives to its data center customers. These are the highest-capacity drives yet, beating 26TB drives from Western Digital and Toshiba. These use second generation Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording, which uses a laser in the drive head that heats a grain (data bit) on the platter surface, enabling the recording head to flip the polarity without affecting its neighbors. HAMR requires new actuator heads and new recording media. This isn’t cheap, so these drives are aimed at large-scale commercial operations using Seagate’s CORVAULT systems. Of more practical interest is the new 22TB IronWolf Pro, a conventional 3.5in ten-platter SATA III drive. Officially it sells for $599, but has been seen discounted to $399, which equates to $18 per terabyte.