Innovations

Why Does Areal Density Matter in the Data Center?

The future of mass-capacity and sustainability is now.

Data is growing faster than the world’s ability to store it.

Between 2024 and 2025, 30 ZB of data will be generated.

And only 2 ZB of storage capacity will be manufactured.

Yikes. This 15x gap¹ indicates a huge need for more storage. As data continues to explode in the wake of AI productization, enterprise data centres will need to find sustainable ways to scale against limited space, power and budget.

Adding more disks isn’t the most efficient.

Nonetheless, it’s how most manufacturers increase hard drive capacity.

But with the direction data is headed — complete overload — this approach won’t be sustainable in the future.

Each disk in a hard drive requires many materials, including non-renewable resources. The more disks added, the more it costs to build (and buy), and the more it takes from the Earth.
Each extra disk also increases power consumption by up to 12.5%². Scaled in a data centre, that equates to massive spend on just power alone.
Drives with more disks require more rack space. Again, at scale, this has a drastic impact on the amount of floor space needed.

Boosting areal density — that’s the answer.

Essentially, this means increasing the amount of data each disk can hold.

Imagine a 10-disk hard drive, and each disk can hold 3 TB of data. In total, you could store 30 TB of data on that drive.

Now imagine the same exact drive — but each disk can hold 4 TB instead of just 3 TB. Capacity gets boosted by 10 TB, no extra disks required.

That’s the magic of areal density.

Fewer discs means less materials, less power.

Capacity

Optimisation

Build Savings

Power Savings

Fewer Discs

Areal Density

Areal density’s impact at scale is profound.

Aside from delivering mass-capacity storage, hard drives with ultra-high areal density can enable data centres to:

Double storage capacity without increasing footprint
Consume 40% less power³
Achieve sustainability goals by decreasing consumption of space, power and natural resources

Seagate is leading the way.

As the world’s only hard drive manufacturer with areal density capabilities of 3 TB per disk, with 5 TB per disk on the horizon, Seagate is at the helm of a storage revolution. It starts with Mozaic 3+™.

Learn More

Exos Mozaic 3+™

The proven path to breakthrough areal density is here with Exos® Mozaic 3+™ mass-capacity hard drives. Built to enable hyper-efficient, sustainable data storage, Exos features Mozaic 3+™, a powerful platform that unleashes areal density of 3 TB/disk so that you can store more exabytes than ever — in less space for significantly a lower cost.

Learn more about Exos with Mozaic 3+™

IDC StorageSphere. 2024 vs. 2025 install base, IDC Datasphere, 2024 vs. 2025 Incremental New Data Generated.
Based on Exos X24, Max Operating, Random Read/Write 4K/16Q.
Based on 13 cents per kilowatt hour.

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