Seagate begins shipping 44TB hard drives with HAMR tech to data centers — Mozaic 4+ platform expands to 10 platters

Source: Tom’s Hardware

Image credit: Seagate

Seagate has announced that it has begun shipments of its latest hard disk drives featuring a 44 TB capacity to one of its partners among the leading hyperscale cloud service providers (CSPs). The new HDDs are based on the company’s Mozaic 4+ platform that relies on Seagate’s heat‑assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology.

Seagate’s Mozaic 4+ platform uses 10 platters with up to 4+ TB capacity per platter to enable drives of up to 44 TB. The drives are believed to feature a 7200 RPM spindle speed as well as conventional magnetic recording (CMR) and therefore offer predictably high performance by HDD standards: think sustained data transfer rates of around 300 MB/s, though this is speculative.

Normally, Seagate and other makers of HDDs tend to release a lineup of hard drives offering different capacity points upon formal launch. With its Mozaic 4+ platform, Seagate is changing its tactics and only formally introduced its 44 TB HDD that is currently being shipped to just one hyperscaler. Other large CSPs are currently qualifying Mozaic 4+-based drives, though the specific capacity points have not been disclosed.