How HAMR Technology is Revolutionizing Hard Drive Product Development

In an interaction with Asia Business Outlook, B.S. Teh, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Seagate, shares his views on implications for data storage and management, optimization of data management processes, manufacturing challenges and more.  

HAMR is being touted as a key innovation in addressing the demand for higher storage densities. How is HAMR technology enabling the development of hard drives with significantly increased storage capacities, and what are the implications for data storage and management?

The exploding demand for storage has certainly put a strain on the storage products today, requiring continued and even accelerated innovation to cope with the demand. For hard disks, a technology that stores more than 80% of the world's enterprise data in the data centre and in the cloud today, the most effective way to increase capacity is by increasing the areal density --- the amount of data that can be stored in a disk. This is measured by the capacity per platter ---HAMR technology is an enabler for areal density improvements. 

How is it done? By elevating bit density and maintaining bit stability, HAMR enables hard drives to store more data in the same disk space. The technology precisely writes data by briefly heating a small portion of the disk with a laser, flipping magnetic polarities with great accuracy. This ensures the reliability and stability of data storage, marking a crucial advancement in addressing the ever-growing need for larger storage capacities while maintaining efficient data management. 

The speed at which data is growing—per IDC, 291ZB of data is expected to be generated in 2027—requires a solution. Hard drive production must increase exponentially when the need arises, for cloud data storage and AI to be able to grow with the demand. HAMR-driven areal density innovation is that solution, by significantly advancing terabyte per disk capacity. It enables great level of real estate, power, and overall TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) savings. 

In the realm of HAMR technology, how does areal density contribute to the optimisation of data management processes? 

The increasing data volume, even more so with the rise of generative AI applications, are overwhelming data centres. When running infrastructure at scale, the crux of optimizing data management is by optimizing the total cost of ownership (TCO). 

HAMR enables higher areal density, therefore increasing the capacity in a single hard disk. This means that with the same number of hard disks datacentres can have a higher capacity, achieving greater TCO efficiency, and reducing storage-related costs.

In the data centres today, there are a lot of older storage racks that house the lower capacity hard disks (4TB, 8TB, and 16TB per drive). These will need to be updated as they age. As an example, upgrading from a 16TB hard disk to a HAMR-enabled 3TB-per-disk, which will provide 30TB in a single unit will enable close to 2:1 power and space savings. 

One of the notable challenges in HAMR technology is dealing with the extreme heat generated during the recording process. Could you elaborate on the engineering solutions employed to manage and dissipate this heat effectively?

HAMR employs the most complex nanoscale engineering and material science on the planet to enhance data bit density. If I get specific about how heat is used in HAMR, we guide the light to a plasmonic transducer and these 3-dimensional nanoscale structures combine to generate an electric field on the disc, heating an area no bigger than a single bit. The heat cools it back down in an instant, in less than 2 nanoseconds. The HAMR laser itself has no substantial impact on temperature, stability, or media reliability. HAMR drives can operate in the same environment as the existing conventional recording technology hard disk.

Over the last 20 years, Seagate rigorously researched and tests HAMR drives so that the drives can operate efficiently with the utmost reliability. They have passed qualification tests with the predictability that we have engineered into the drives.

Reliability and durability are critical aspects of hard drive technology. How is HAMR technology addressing concerns related to the longevity and performance of hard drives, particularly in high-demand environments such as data centres? 

Reliability and durability have been the crux of today’s enterprise class drives, extending the lifespan of hard drives. Seagate enterprise drives offer extreme market-leading reliability with 550 TB/year workload rating, and 2.5M-hr MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) to meet the most demanding requirements. What separates HAMR drives is the terabyte per disk leadership, the yardstick for areal density that lets hyperscalers store more data in the same physical space, reducing the number of drives required for a given capacity. This revolution in hard drive areal density advancements extends the economies of scale from hyperscale data centres to private data centres.