Seagate Reveal First Samples of HDDs with 8TB Capacity

Tags: Seagate; Hard drive; HDD

BY Tony McElroy Jul 21, 2014 11:26 PM EDT

Seagate Technology announced on Thursday that the first samples of hard disk drives (HDDs) with 8TB capacity are on its way to the customers. The company, however, did not reveal any peculiarities about the product or the name of its customers.

According to Steve Luczo, Seagate’s chairman and CEO, in a conference call, they have also delivered 8TB customer development units to major customers as well as cloud service providers and the initial feedback from the clients were positive.

Seagate did not reveal any info about the drive. However, there are not many means to build an HDD that has such huge capacity these days. Nevertheless, here are some of the noted features of the drive:

· More platters per drive

While Seagate may follow HGST with sealed HDDs, it’s possible to fill a drive with a gas that is less dense than the air and then squeeze seven (or even eight) current-generation enterprise-class 3.5” platters of enhanced volume (1TB – 1.1TB). This innovation greatly works for server-class drives, but it is clearly too expensive for consumer-oriented HDDs.

· Higher areal density of platters.

Seagate could install six enterprise-class platters with shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology into a non-sealed drive. SMR increases areal density of HDD platters by 25 per cent compared to current-gen platters with perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology. While SMR hasn’t been widely used for consumer drives, it’s probable that the technology progresses significantly that Seagate already has samples of enterprise-class SMR platters that are normally used for server HDDs.

· Significantly increase areal density of platters.

Seagate might ship prototypes based on platters with HAMR [heat-assisted magnetic recording] technology. Back in 2012 TDK revealed 2TB HAMR platters for 3.5” HDDs, allowing Seagate to use them to test-drive HAMR HDDs with its PC and server customers.

Keeping in mind that Seagate talks about 8TB “customer development units”, the real commercial drives of such capacity are possibly several quarters, if not years, away from mass production and adoption.