HDDs with HAMR HD Density based Platters bring 80 TB HDDs on the horizon
The entire technology industry is always innovating and evolving. While for lower capacity and volume SSDs are your best option, for mass storage the HDD seems to stay around for a long time as companies still are actively developing their tech.
The latest technology development for HDD platters is coming from SDK Japanese company Showa Denko KK (SDK). Their High-Density HAMR technology is making use of something we've discussed a couple of time already, heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), now updated allowing for way more density. The claim is now that 3.5-inch HDDs can reach capacities of 70 to 80 even TB.
HAMR represents a recording method in which magnetic film is locally heated at the time of recording. This technology has been developed to solve the “magnetic recording trilemma”: difficulty in simultaneously meeting the three requirements of fine-particle structure, resistance to thermal fluctuation, and ease of magnetization. Compared with the recording density of approx. 1.14 Tb/in2 for HD media based on conventional magnetic recording methods, it is said that HAMR-based HD media will achieve recording density of 5-6 Tb/in2 in the future. Provided that the same number of disks are used, it is estimated that a 3.5-inch HDD will achieve storage capacity of approx. 70-80 TB per unit.
The innovation here is based on a thin magnetic layer with an allow of iron and platinum, that created very small crystal particles on that platter, allowed to be written. The materials have another advantage, they can withstand heat quite well.
SDK make any bold claims in terms of specifications, but it does indicate that GAMR discs should be able to reach 5 to 6 Tb per square inch. Currently, that is 1.14 Tb per square inch. So the value that is easily quadrupled. It is uncertain if and when the new technology will go into production.
Sources: SDK via Hardware.info
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Senior Member
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I haven't touched a mechanical hard drive since 2015 and would never go back to using them. Your basic SATA SSD's are reasonably priced, plenty faster and with no moving parts inside them, less likely to skip (in a laptop) or break. And they run silent.
NVMe SSD's offer even better performance with insane speeds and now they're cheap enough to buy with decent capacities that you can use them as your main OS drive and for storage. They take up far less space too.
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I haven't touched a mechanical hard drive since 2015 and would never go back to using them. Your basic SATA SSD's are reasonably priced, plenty faster and with no moving parts inside them, less likely to skip (in a laptop) or break. And they run silent.
NVMe SSD's offer even better performance with insane speeds and now they're cheap enough to buy with decent capacities that you can use them as your main OS drive and for storage. They take up far less space too.
That's fine for some but for the price of a 2TB SSD, you can buy say 10-12TB HDD. If you need mass storage, SSD's are nowhere near there, price per TB anyway.
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The is still no replacement for large capacity spinning disks for bulk storrage.
example:
2x 16TB harddrives in raid 1 for safety.
8x 4 TB SSDs are needed to reach the same capacity and mirror backup.
I do not think "normal" of the shelf motherboards are able to run hardware raid with 8 drives, so software raid needs to be used, with all the added performance hit on the CPU required to monitor 8 drives in software.
Not everyone needs this much capacity, but a streamer or youtuber could easily reach those numbers, if they save there videos locally.
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80TB is astonishing, considering that my first PC came with a 7Gb HDD or so. For long years to come HDD will still be the go to for mass storage and archival needs.
I've been using SSD for boot drive for a couple years now and just invested on an NVMe. I wouldn't go back to HDD, but the price just isn't there for SSD storage.
The common mortal will use maybe a fast 512Gb/1Tb NVMe as a boot drive and a 1/2Tb SATA SSD for casual storage. Then have External HDD as needed to have an offline archive to go back to.
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Those are some impressive numbers, and will surely keep HDDs relevant a bit longer. These drives would be excellent for archiving, since their sequential read/write speeds ought to be very fast and they just have so much capacity. However, the random read speeds of these must be absolutely atrocious. You might need an SSD just for dedicating indexing, and another SSD for cache.