5 ms·

As a person who doesn't know much about HDD technology, I always wonder: what were the advances that allowed this particular bump to happen?

sound1 8y ago
That is a great question :-)
lightbyte 8y ago
From TFA: >The Exos 16 TB hard drive using HAMR technology is now the world’s biggest HDD in terms of capacity overtaking the 14 TB Barracuda Pro. >HAMR, which is the acronym for heat-assisted magnetic recording, to be precise. This replaces the regular PMR, perpendicular magnetic recording, found in most HDDs. To the average consumer, this doesn’t mean much at all. However, Seagate believes that HAMR is the key to making significantly larger capacities readily available shortly.
- fallat 8y ago
  What is the theoretical realistic limits for HDD storage? From the sounds of it this 16TB HAMR-enabled drive is just the first of many we will see year-to-year to continue HDD sales.
  - selectodude 8y ago
    Seagate says they'll get up to 100 TB with HAMR. Curious at what point it's no longer financially reasonable to keep researching ways to increase density.
    - SwellJoe 8y ago
      We produce and process more data in a few days than we did in a year even as recently as a decade ago (and, by "we", I mostly mean companies that want to store every detail of every human life for analysis in order to maximize profits). So far, the increasing need for storage has kept pace with the ability to store it.
  - elorant 8y ago
    Seagate's roadplan is 100TB by 2025. https://www.techpowerup.com/249271/seagates-roadmap-shows-how-we-can-expect-100-tb-hdds-in-2025 https://www.techpowerup.com/249271/seagates-roadmap-shows-ho...
the_jeremy 8y ago
ELI15: before, when you wrote to disk, you needed a stronger magnetic pulse to change the polarity of the bit. This meant a wider area per bit. Now, we can heat a smaller part of the disk, making it easier to flip the polarity with a smaller magnetic pulse, so the area of the bit doesn't need to be as large, so we can store more info.

sound1 8y ago

That is a great question :-)

lightbyte 8y ago

From TFA: >The Exos 16 TB hard drive using HAMR technology is now the world’s biggest HDD in terms of capacity overtaking the 14 TB Barracuda Pro. >HAMR, which is the acronym for heat-assisted magnetic recording, to be precise. This replaces the regular PMR, perpendicular magnetic recording, found in most HDDs. To the average consumer, this doesn’t mean much at all. However, Seagate believes that HAMR is the key to making significantly larger capacities readily available shortly.

fallat 8y ago
What is the theoretical realistic limits for HDD storage? From the sounds of it this 16TB HAMR-enabled drive is just the first of many we will see year-to-year to continue HDD sales.
- selectodude 8y ago
  Seagate says they'll get up to 100 TB with HAMR. Curious at what point it's no longer financially reasonable to keep researching ways to increase density.
  - SwellJoe 8y ago
    We produce and process more data in a few days than we did in a year even as recently as a decade ago (and, by "we", I mostly mean companies that want to store every detail of every human life for analysis in order to maximize profits). So far, the increasing need for storage has kept pace with the ability to store it.
- elorant 8y ago
  Seagate's roadplan is 100TB by 2025. https://www.techpowerup.com/249271/seagates-roadmap-shows-how-we-can-expect-100-tb-hdds-in-2025 https://www.techpowerup.com/249271/seagates-roadmap-shows-ho...

the_jeremy 8y ago

ELI15: before, when you wrote to disk, you needed a stronger magnetic pulse to change the polarity of the bit. This meant a wider area per bit. Now, we can heat a smaller part of the disk, making it easier to flip the polarity with a smaller magnetic pulse, so the area of the bit doesn't need to be as large, so we can store more info.