Seagate recently announced that it has begun shipping its new generation of 40TB hard drives to data center customers, marking a significant advancement in high-density storage technology. This hard drive features advanced Mozaic 4 Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) technology, with each platter capable of holding 4TB of data, and is expected to enter mass production in the first half of 2026. Furthermore, Seagate has set a long-term goal to achieve the mass production of hard drives exceeding 100TB capacity by 2030.
Currently, Seagate is fully focused on developing HAMR recording technology, which utilizes heated magnetic materials to enhance the efficiency and density of data writing. Compared to traditional perpendicular magnetic recording technology, HAMR can store a significantly larger amount of data in a smaller space. The newly launched Mozaic 3+ technology has already increased single platter density to 3TB and has been widely applied in the 36TB hard drives shipped this year, exceeding one million units in sales.
It has been learned that the Mozaic series will continue to evolve into higher versions like Mozaic 5 and Mozaic 10, theoretically allowing each disc to reach a storage capacity of up to 15TB. This overall capacity is expected to surpass current standards by several times. However, to break through existing limitations, reliance on the reconstruction of disk structures or the development of innovative materials will still be essential.
The newly launched 40TB hard drive is primarily aimed at the high-end server and data center market. Seagate anticipates increasing this capacity to 44TB by 2027 and plans to introduce the Mozaic 10 specifications product in 2032. As for the consumer market, it will have to wait for the technology to mature and costs to decrease.
As the demand for large-capacity hard drives surges, particularly driven by artificial intelligence, global data center storage is set to experience explosive growth. Analysts predict that in the next four years, there will be an astounding 7.2 ZB (that’s 7.2 billion TB) of new data generated, a figure that far surpasses the total accumulation of the past decade.
Seagate’s CEO, Dave Mosley, emphasized that a market transformation is on the horizon, and the balance between supply and demand is no longer surplus. He stated that the company will continue to manage production capacity cautiously to avoid falling into the same surplus issues as before. He predicts that by 2028, the world will generate 400 ZB of data each year, and at that time, Seagate’s 50TB hard drives will also be hitting the market.
Seagate’s Chief Business Officer, BS Teh, has revealed that the company’s goal is to launch hard drives with capacities exceeding 100TB before 2030, keeping pace with the ongoing growth trend in future data applications.
