Seagate: 18 and 20 TB HDDs by next year, 50 TB drives in 2026
Each time I write about HDD news they seem to have grown exponentially in volume size. During a financial conference call, Seagate slipped that it will be introducing 18 and 20 TB HDDs in 2020, with an aim for 50TB in 2026.
Now I for the life of me cannot figure out why I'd need that much storage space, or find the means to back it all that up at HDDs performance speeds. But man volume-wise, that is impressive. The HDDs are expected to use nine platters. The 18TB versions will still use cmr, or conventional magnetic recording whereas 20 TB models will get hammer-time, eurhm, HAMR (heat-assisted magnetic recording). These ginormous volume sizes pale away by the fact that Seagate spoke of 50 terabytes and presumably larger capacities in 2026.
I'll leave out the ís 'mine is bigger than your puns'.
Sources: Seagate (quarterly figures) , Seeking Alpha, via HWI
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Whereas SSD prices have been steadily coming down, apart from some abnormal periods, HDD prices haven't moved anywhere for a long time. A regular drive (like 6TB, for example) today would cost as much as it did a few years ago. Thus, the bells will soon be tolling for HDDs below the massive drives, like the ones mentioned in the article.
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What are you smoking ?
They have come down in price massively in the last 3 years.
I bought my first 8TB hard-disk in Q1 2017 for a "very cheap" 359 Euro (which was down from ~400+ the year before).
I bought my last 8TB hard-disk last month for 138 Euro.
That's 62% freekin' percent reduction !
Obviously outdated 1TB-2TB drives are still going to have a much higher price/capacity ratio, and don't come down in price much (they just tend to vanish from the market when they stop making sense)
p.s.
Prices in US are even lower.
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why 7 year till 50tb?
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I've found drives smaller than 1TB don't really change much at all in price, but, I figure that's just because with capacities that low, the only thing you're paying for are the materials and production costs.
Part of me wonders how any drives smaller than 0.5TB will ever be sold. The only way to sell them for a reasonable price is if the manufacturer takes a loss of them.
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Haha Seagate sure doesn't want HDDs to die. But, as long as they can get capacities that otherwise can't be achieved with SSDs in the same amount of space, these drives will be relevant. This is especially true, now that we're got cameras that can capture raw 4K (or even 8K) footage, thousands of frames per second, or photos at 45MP+. I figure these drives aren't going to be too popular for mainframes, since the seek times will likely be terrible, and a mainframe usually has plenty of room to fit more small drives.