Your 8TB HDD might seem big now, but 120TB drives are on the way | PC Gamer - hancockmehisguarl

Your 8TB HDD power seem big now, but 120TB drives are on the way

(Image deferred payment: Pixabay (geralt))

If things go as currently planned, Seagate will launch a 100TB hard disk tug (HDD) in to a lesser extent than a decade, which is much than five times the capacity of today's biggest HDDs. Then former after 2030, information technology volition push single-drive depot capacities even further, to 120TB and beyond.

Even if Seagate needs to adjust its recently updated storage roadmap at some head, the fact that much large capacities are happening the celestial horizon iterate that HDDs are non perfectly. Sportsmanlike the opposite, they accounted for over a zettabyte (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) of shipped storage last year. The pauperization for mass storage is continually healthy, and that's not going to change anytime before long.

If you head over to Newegg, the largest HDDs available are 18TB. At that place are several different models protrusive at approximately $400. Among them is Seagate's 18TB Exos X18, a standard 3.5-inch SATA HDD full with club platters, that is intended for the enterprise market.

Partly of Seagate's effort to massively increase storage capacities rests on oestrus-motor-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology.

"HAMR is a technology designed to enable the next big increase in the add up of data that can atomic number 4 stored on a hard cause. It uses a late sort of media magnetic technology on from each one disk that allows data bits, or grains, to become smaller and more densely packed than ever, while remaining magnetically stable. A small laser diode attached to each recording head heats a tiny spot on the disk, which enables the recording head to flip the magnetised polarity of each very unfluctuating bite, sanctioning data to be typewritten," Seagate explains.

Superficial a dwarfish closer pour down the line, Seagate anticipates launching 30TB+ HDDs in 2023, followed by 40TB+ drives by 2025 and 50TB HDDs in 2026.

Seagate revealed its updated roadmap during its recent Virtual Psychoanalyst Event (via Anandtech), where it talked about the need to move on from perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) in order to continue pushing capacities into new-sprung territories.

"As we approach the maximum useful capacity of PMR technology, each successive drive increases by 1TB or 2TB at a prison term," said Jeff Fochtman, Seagate's senior vice chairman of business and marketing. "With HAMR technology, IT allows us to skip over in steps of 4 terabytes, 6 terabytes, or even out 10 terabytes at a time."

Seagate also talked about adopting to the full bit patterned media (BPM) to hit increasingly bigger capacities. This will enable increasing the maximum areal concentration from 2.6 terabits per square inch to more than 8Tb per square inch.

It will cost absorbing to see how Seagate approaches the consumer market in the coming years as HDDs balloon in size. HDDs are unmoving great as secondary storage options, but for primary coil reposition chores, jelled state drives (SSDs) offer much better performance. SSDs will be getting bigger also, just not along the same level of HDDs.

SSDs have also permeated the data eye grocery store in some instances. Seagate acknowledges that SSDs will increase their economic value proposition in the coming years, only believes HDDs leave still redeem a lour TCO (total cost of ownership) passim this and next decennary.

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his away time, He rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only uncomparable of those is true).