Seagate, one of the leading players in the storage segment, has launched a 36TB HDD, its largest capacity to date. The new product in the Exos M series comes shortly after breaking its previous record.
In December 2024, the company launched a 32TB Exos M HDD. However, Seagate has not been slow to surpass this capacity. These Exos M large HDDs are primarily intended for data centers. The company develops them with the idea of supplying them to hyperscalers—cloud service providers—such as Microsoft and Amazon, among others. Due to the enterprise demand for these types of drives, it is very unlikely that you will find them in traditional consumer electronics stores.
Seagate’s largest capacity Exos M HDD boasts 36TB, a world record
Seagate is exclusively adopting HAMR technology with its new 36TB Exos M HDD, moving away from CMR and SMR. This results in a 25% reduction in cost per TB, which is critical to maintaining the capacity-to-price ratio that keeps HDDs still relevant in an industry where SSDs offer faster speeds and are increasingly cheaper.
The new product also establishes Seagate’s current leadership in the segment. Western Digital, a direct rival, offers HDDs with a maximum capacity of 32TB. Plus, Seagate is also ahead in terms of TB per platter. Its newest 36TB Exos M HDD has 10 platters, while Western Digital’s 32TB drive needs 11 platters to reach a lower capacity. Toshiba, another competitor in the segment, has been testing 31TB and 32TB HDDs with 10 and 11 platters. So, Seagate’s advantage is considerable.
Seagate is using the density of its HDDs as a unique selling point against its rivals. The company claims to be the only one capable of reaching 3.6TB per platter. Plus, they aim to achieve 10TB in the not-too-distant future. The company has even tested drives with more than 6TB per platter in lab environments. The 6TB-per-platter units could reach the commercial market before 2030.
122TB SSDs could hit the market by the end of 2025
Meanwhile, SSDs continue to evolve in terms of density. Drives with up to 122TB are expected to hit the market this year with prices of around $80 per TB. The price is four or five times that of an HDD, which shows why these are still popular.
2025-01-22 15:04:50