Seagate introduced a 36 TB HDD – this is the densest hard drive with CMR recording

The American company Seagate Technology remains at the forefront of supporters of heated magnetic recording (HAMR) technology, expanding the range of drives offered to 36 TB models that combine 10 magnetic plates with CMR recording in one case. This is a unique proposal in its own way, since it is generally accepted that only SMR plates can provide such a recording density.

Image source: Seagate Technology

The abbreviation CMR refers to conventional magnetic recording, which does not experiment with the orientation of magnetic particles on the plate. SMR technology involves tiled magnetic recording with partial overlap, it is more complex to manufacture and has a reputation for lower reliability combined with higher cost and lower data transfer rates. In principle, Seagate itself began to use platters with SMR for its 32 TB drives, but at the next step announced the possibility of abandoning them in favor of the more familiar CMR. Previously, the limit for this technology performed by Seagate was 30 TB drives.

Competing Western Digital combines SMR and the presence of 11 magnetic plates instead of ten to achieve a capacity of 32 TB. Seagate not only managed to save ten magnetic platters when moving to 36 TB, but also limited itself to CMR technology. Western Digital’s CMR only achieves a capacity of 26 TB using 11 platters. In fact, Seagate has CMR-type magnetic plates, whose recording density is one and a half times higher than that of its competitor. Theoretically, in the future the company, through various tricks, can increase it to 6 TB per platter.

The problem for Seagate hard drives with HAMR recording technology remains their poor commercial availability. So far, even models with a capacity of 32 TB have not gained much popularity. Seagate’s latest 36TB Exos M (Mozaic 3+) drives are currently being shipped to select customers in limited quantities for testing. The artificial intelligence boom is fueling demand for large-capacity hard drives as developers need high-capacity, yet inexpensive drives. SSDs are usually responsible for data processing speed in such systems.