Seagate has announced that its latest 44TB hard drives, based on the Mozaic 4+ platform, have started shipping to leading hyperscale cloud providers. Powered by Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) technology, these drives are available in huge capacities, reflecting hyperscale environments’ need for scalable storage systems.
The Mozaic 4+ platform is Seagate’s latest innovation in storage technology, powered by HAMR, which it says enables it to increase capacity without impacting performance, unlike previous density-focused hard drive tech, such as Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR). HAMR uses a nanoscale laser to heat the recording spot during writes, which increases the density in bits per inch without needing overlapping tracks. This results in more predictable performance, especially in mixed read and write workloads.
The result is that Seagate can pack up over 4TB into a single platter, resulting in a maximum 44TB of total capacity per drive using a 10-platter configuration. While the company didn’t mention other HDD capacities, we assume that other models could use multiples of 4TB (or 4.4TB since 44TB/10 = 4.4TB per platter), giving us options such as 40TB or 36TB drives.
Though Seagate didn’t disclose any performance figures, given that the company’s Exos Xz 30/32TB could sustain up to 270MB/s, we assume the new 44TB HDDs can hit about 300MB/s, using a 7,200rpm spin speed. Final real-world performance will also depend on firmware, caching, and actuator design.
The brand claims that Mozaic’s high density can reduce datacentre footprint by about 100 square feet (9.29m²) on exabyte deployments, all while improving infrastructure efficiency by approximately 47% compared to using 30TB drives. According to Seagate, this means datacentres can lower their annual energy consumption by roughly 0.8 million KWh.
“Data has become one of the most valuable assets for enterprises, fueling business insights, enhancing productivity, and enabling competitive advantage. As the foundation of modern data center infrastructure, data storage solutions are essential to manage ever-increasing data volumes and maximize returns on investments in today’s AI driven-world,” said Dave Mosley, Seagate’s chair and chief executive officer. “Seagate’s HAMR-based Mozaic products deliver the scale, performance, and efficiency customers need to unlock the full potential of their data.”
By shipping its drivers for customer qualification now, Seagate is sending a signal to its partners that it’s surpassing the competition from Western Digital. The latter has just recently unveiled its plans to ship 40TB drives in the second half of the year, so Seagate may convince some to switch brands. For the future, Seagate’s roadmap includes an evolution to 10TB per platter, which should result in up to 100TB HDDs by 2030.
