You're just [0] away from FREE shipping!
Your cart
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 center 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 3TB, 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 3.2TB per platter with a roadmap to 5TB and beyond.
By leveraging high-coercivity media and localized 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 center utilization without compromising power and sustainability objectives.
Higher per-platter density enables greater capacity without expanding physical infrastructure, reducing real estate costs.
Enterprises can improve real estate ROI for new scale-out or managed fleets with higher per-platter density storage; for example, transitioning from 1TB to 3TB per platter allows a drive to achieve 30TB capacity in the same form factor as a 10TB drive.
Drives with higher areal density deliver 2.6× better power efficiency per terabyte than current 10TB drives.
Seagate's leadership in areal density supports these scaling benefits for data centers 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
Acquistion cost savings per TB
Embodied carbon reduction per TB
Operational carbon and power reduction per TB
Seagate’s roadmap to achieve 5TB+ per platter in coming years enables scalable data growth while increasing sustainability.
Improved areal density lowers carbon footprints by reducing drive counts and optimizing embodied carbon in data centers. Drives with higher density deliver up to 3.5× better embodied carbon efficiency than standard 10TB drives.
The proven path to breakthrough areal density is here. Built to enable hyper-efficient, sustainable data storage, Exos mass-capacity hard drives now feature Mozaic 3+, a powerful platform that unleashes areal density of 3TB per disk so that you can store more exabytes in the same space for a significantly lower cost.
Three Truths About Hard Drives and SSDs
An examination of the claim that flash will replace hard drives in the data center.
Powering Dropbox’s Business Value
Learn how Seagate’s areal density enhancements produce TCO savings.
Seagate’s Data Center Workloads Served Entirely by Hybrid and Hard Drive Storage Systems
Learn how Seagate’s updated data center strategy improved performance and efficiency, deploying hard drive and hybrid systems to meet all workload needs—from routine to demanding.
Mozaic 3+
Mozaic 3+™ incorporates Seagate’s unique implementation of HAMR to deliver mass-capacity storage at unprecedented areal densities.
What Is Mozaic 3+, How Does It Work, and What Can It Do for My Data Center?
Seagate's Mozaic 3+ white paper details a breakthrough in data storage, featuring HAMR technology for unparalleled areal density per disk, enabling future-ready, high-capacity hard drives.
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.
