Seagate unveils Mozaic 3+ hard drive boosting data centre capacity

Seagate has reached a crucial milestone in the storage industry with the launch of their Mozaic 3+ hard drive platform. This revolutionary development employs Seagate's industry-leading implementation of Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) technology and results in unparalleled areal densities of 3TB+ per platter, with plans to reach 4TB+ and 5TB+ densities over the next few years.

The Mozaic 3+ platform powers the newly announced and high-capacity models of Seagate's flagship Exos product range, boasting capacities of 30TB and beyond. Exos 30TB+ products are said to be shipping out to hyperscale cloud customers this quarter in significant volumes. The technology is set to address some of the biggest challenges facing the storage industry today.

Seagate's advancements in areal density, which allow for a greater number of bits to be stored on a platter, mean that data centres can store more data in the same space than ever before. Upgrading from a traditional 16TB PMR drive (considered the average capacity in large-scale data centres) to a 30TB Mozaic 3+ drive will effectively double capacity within the same physical constraints. Additionally, the Mozaic 3+ technology delivers a 40% improvement in per terabyte power consumption, helping data centres to significantly reduce storage acquisition and operational costs.

The Mozaic 3+ platform also supports the pursuit of sustainability goals—an ongoing priority for large-scale data centres—by delivering a 55% reduction in embodied carbon per terabyte compared with traditional 16TB PMR drives. The anticipated high demand for the new technology from data centre customers underlines the expectation that the qualification of Mozaic 3+ is on track for completion by the end of this quarter. A leading cloud service provider is already making moves to transition to Mozaic 3+ drives, reflecting their faith in the technology.

Seagate's CEO, Dave Mosley, stated that "Seagate is the world's only hard drive manufacturer with the areal density capability to get to 3TB per platter and with 5TB on the horizon." He added, "as AI use cases put a premium on raw data sets, more companies are going to need to store all the data they can. To accommodate the resulting masses of data, areal density matters more than ever."

This technology doesn't just rely on HAMR. "It comprises several industry-first innovations that we've integrated to help us scale areal density," Mosley noted. These breakthroughs include a media alloy utilising an innovative iron-platinum superlattice structure for superior bit stability and unprecedented data writing precision, a nanophotonic laser for effective data writing, and one of the world's smallest and most sensitive magnetic field reading sensors.

Seagate also plans to vertically integrate the nanophotonic laser into the plasmonic writer subsystem, which Mosley indicated should "ensure even greater efficiency and yield to support rapid scaling of volume production." Within the Mozaic 3+ setup, an in-house developed integrated controller efficiently oversees all this advanced technology, delivering up to three times the performance compared to prior solutions.

John Rydning, Research Vice President IDC Global DataSphere, commented that "Seagate's innovative areal density breakthrough is timely and will enable it to deliver increasingly higher-capacity hard drive products for many years." Given that improvements in hard drive area density are integral to economically and efficiently expanding mass storage, it is reckoned Seagate's development is more than crucial for the industry.