What difference does areal density make?
The future of sustainable mass-capacity storage is now.
As a result, areal density innovation is more crucial than ever for sustainable mass-capacity storage.
Hard drive areal density progression has traditionally been measured in terabytes per square inch (TB/in²), but a more intuitive way of measuring it is terabytes per disk (TB/disk), which refers to the amount of data stored on each spinning platter.
Progression in areal density directly impacts how efficiently data can be stored within a physical space. In large infrastructure environments like a data centre where space is at a premium, storage density improvements afford significant efficiency benefits when scaling — a strategy deployed by hyperscale cloud service providers who continually adopt the highest hard drive capacity points available.
By reorienting data bits from a horizontal to a vertical alignment, PMR reduced magnetic interference between bits to increase data stability and density.
Because PMR technology hit its limit of areal density per platter at 3 TB, a new way to increase areal density was needed. Developed by Seagate engineers and launched in January 2024, the Mozaic 3+™ platform marks the world’s first implementation of heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) enabling 3.2 TB per platter with a roadmap to 5 TB and beyond.
By leveraging high-coercivity media and localised plasmonic heating, HAMR achieves stable, precise writing at atomic scales, pushing areal density to unprecedented levels while maintaining the industry-standard 3.5-inch form factor.
It achieves this by offering higher per-platter data density and thus packing in more storage capacity per drive slot, improving data centre utilisation without compromising power and sustainability objectives.
Higher per-platter density enables greater capacity without expanding physical infrastructure, reducing property costs.
Enterprises can improve infrastructure ROI for new scale-out or managed fleets with higher per-platter density storage; for example, transitioning from 1 TB to 3 TB per platter allows a drive to achieve 30 TB capacity in the same form factor as a 10 TB drive.
Drives with higher areal density deliver 2.6× better power efficiency per terabyte than current 10 TB drives.
Seagate's leadership in areal density supports these scaling benefits for data centres while also lowering the bill of materials (BOM) cost per TB across its full hard drive portfolio, benefiting all markets and applications.
PMR
10 platters
HAMR
10 platters
Acquisition cost savings per TB
Embodied carbon reduction per TB
Operational carbon and power reduction per TB
Seagate’s roadmap to achieve 5 TB+ per platter in coming years enables scalable data growth while increasing sustainability.
Improved areal density lowers carbon footprints by reducing drive counts and optimising embodied carbon in data centres. Drives with higher density deliver up to 3.5× better embodied carbon efficiency than standard 10 TB drives.
The proven path to breakthrough areal density is here. Built to enable hyperefficient, sustainable data storage, Exos mass-capacity hard drives now feature Mozaic 3+, a powerful platform that unleashes areal density of 3 TB per disk so that you can store more exabytes in the same space for a significantly lower cost.
Whether you’re new to enterprise storage or just looking for a next-level upgrade, we can help you find the right solution. Start now by connecting with our experts to better assess your storage needs.