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Seagate Just Unleashed 44TB Hard Drives (nerds.xyz) 46

Posted by EditorDavid from the going-to-the-storage dept.
"Seagate says it is now shipping its Mozaic 4+ HAMR-based hard drives at up to 44TB per drive," writes Slashdot reader BrianFagioli, "with production deployments already underway at two hyperscale cloud providers.

"The company claims the platform is the only heat-assisted magnetic recording [HAMR] implementation currently operating at scale, and it is targeting a path from today's 4+TB per disk toward 10TB per disk, eventually enabling 100TB-class drives." In a one-exabyte deployment, Seagate estimates Mozaic could improve infrastructure efficiency by roughly 47% compared to standard 30TB drives, cutting both footprint and energy consumption... HAMR uses a tiny laser to heat the disk surface during writes, allowing higher recording density without sacrificing stability. With most major cloud storage providers reportedly qualified on the Mozaic platform, Seagate is positioning spinning disks, not flash, as the long-term answer for cost-effective AI-scale data growth.
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Seagate Just Unleashed 44TB Hard Drives More

Seagate Just Unleashed 44TB Hard Drives

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  • HD are not dead yet. I just built a DIY PC. 1TB M2 for Windows, 512GB M2 for Linux, 8TB WD Red HD for backups and auxiliary storage. Its more convenient and faster than a NAS, which I also have for things that actually might get shared between systems,
    • No, particularly for RAID as well as NAS/SNA storage, hard drives won't be replaced by SSD's simply due to costs, as well as the huge densities they support

      • Here here (Score:3, Informative)

        by JBMcB ( 73720 )
        I'm running a 5x ZFS+2 30TB FreeNAS array. All our desktops and laptops back up to it, and it stores all our ripped CDs that get streamed through Plex. The really important stuff has a secondary off-line backup (photos, tax stuff) as well. Total cost was around $1000 including a Dell server. Worth every penny if you don't want to loose all your stuff.

        • this is, as they say, the way

          6 x 4TB Z2, in a scavenged proliant with 64GB ECC, one 16T WD gold in a separate normal box as a backup target, and that machine has backblaze so it's offsite unlimited for $100 / year

          initial 4TB drives bought as a lot of used ebay drives and replaced as they become marginal, but it's been years now and i've only replaced 2 of them with new red pros so far

          everything's ticking along nicely, only thing i really need to do is switch over to Scale at some point. insane value for bit

      • Spinning hard drives will fill the space tape drives left... you could just run through the server racks hitting the eject button, by the time you got to the end of the row, you go to the start of the row and pull tapes, put them in a padded case (the tapes are using differential writes), and get out of the building before the fire gets there... now, it'll be harddrives in the same situation, just you'll have to issue a stop-write command across the array (the drives are using a similar thing).
        SSDs still do

        • Everything about this post is deranged theorycrafting assuming any data worth keeping is somehow only in one datacenter and would need top be physically removed in case of imminent site loss. Then you go on to more nonsense about not being able to back up a large hard drive, as if data can't be split onto multiple smaller drives.

          • Theorycrafting? Never heard of such a thing. It's an interesting idea... a theory crafting something (an argument against or for).

            So, absolutely no data backup at a Google datacenter... got it. Splitting it up to 20-40+ smaller drives (assume that includes thumbdrives)... assuming you have that many drive docks going, are they each ready to yank the drive?
            Imagine you're there late at night and the massive UPS has a catastrophic failure... do you just sit and sip your coffee 'assuming' the data center is

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by godrik ( 1287354 )

      It's a question of cost really.
      A 1TB NVME SSD is about $150.
      A 1TB SATA SSD is about $100.
      A 1TB HDD is about $40.

      If you are mostly interesting in storage and not performance. HDD are hard to beat.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'll take my 70 TB NAS against your measly 8 TB HDD any day.

  • Does Seagate still suck? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sound+vision ( 884283 ) on Saturday March 07, 2026 @01:49PM (#66028220) Journal

    I remember 20 years ago Seagate drives were the ones to avoid. I have never bought anything besides WD. Has that changed?

    • Re: Does Seagate still suck? (Score:5, Informative)

      by wgoodman ( 1109297 ) on Saturday March 07, 2026 @02:08PM (#66028252)

      Seagate is still pretty crap

    • Quality (Score:5, Interesting)

      by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Saturday March 07, 2026 @02:22PM (#66028292)
      At this point I think it depends on the individual drive mechanism, even from the same manufacturer. The best data source for this stuff is Backblaze, whom unfortunately only covers enterprise class drives. There is even quite a bit of variation across different manufacturing runs of the same drive.

      https://www.backblaze.com/blog... [backblaze.com]

      One run of Seagate 12TB drives has a 2.7% failure rate, which is mediocre, while a different run of the same drive is at 0.9%, which is pretty good. HGST used to be great, but now their numbers are mostly well north of 1%. WDC looks pretty good, except for one drive at 2.6%,

    • I remember 20 years ago Seagate drives were the ones to avoid. I have never bought anything besides WD. Has that changed?

      Things are "the same" but it's not really about brands. It's about individual drive families. Every manufacturer has good and bad drive families. You can't just make an assumption based on brand.

      I've usually bought WD, but it's based on the track record of the drive family. Similar with the occasional Seagate. I've had pretty good luck with such "researched" drives.

      • Re:More about individual drives, not the brand (Score:4, Informative)

        by UnknowingFool ( 672806 ) on Saturday March 07, 2026 @03:16PM (#66028368)
        Yes it comes down to drive families. For example, WD Red were for NAS drives; however, the cheapest WD Red drives in 2021 quietly switched to SMR instead of CMR which had huge performance problems in RAID configurations. WD had to distinguish between WD Red (SMR) with WD Red Plus or Pro (CMR) as part of class action lawsuits. Frankly the only use case I can think of using SMR for NAS is single drive NAS machines.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by drnb ( 2434720 )

          Frankly the only use case I can think of using SMR for NAS is single drive NAS machines.

          RAID 1 mirroring in a 2 drive consumer oriented NAS?

          • Maybe not mirroring. Maybe striping. The issue was syncing across drives as SMR drives caches the files in a temporary area before overlapping sectors are saved. Striping would not be affected by striping as much; however, the caching part might be problematic depending on where the files exist.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by nester ( 14407 )

          I just had 2 WD red plus drives DOA, from different vendors. (No it's not the 3v spin-up signal thing; even blocking that pin they were both dead.) I switched to Toshiba, which unfortunately is louder.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      Well seeing as there simply won't be any WD drives in the consumer market this year, I guess beggars can't be choosers.

    • For the consumer models, Seagate has slightly worse reliability than WD. For enterprise models, they seem about even. However for the price of enterprise HDDs, the customer should expect longer warranties and impeccable customer service.

  • While 44TB seems inordinately excessive for any purpose outside running Earth-destroying AI clanker slop upon first glance, I can definitely see this being useful. I'm something of a data hoarder, so the idea of having 44TB or more available to me sounds heavenly. It'd be especially nice if it manages to be reasonably affordable.

    I would love to be able to go to an online store and buy such a huge HDD for a good price. I would just die of happiness if I were able to buy some 100TB drives for $1000 or less. U

    • I'm not sure I'd want to trust a single drive with all of my hoarded data.

      • I'm not sure I'd want to trust a single drive with all of my hoarded data.

        I wouldn't want my hoard (or backups) on a single anything. Defense in depth.

        The PC has M2 SSD for normal Window and Linux use, but also a big HD for backups and the hoard.
        Then there is a NAS.
        Then there are external drives in a full size powered USB enclosure. Backups of PCs and NAS.

        • I don't believe ya'll data is worth ALL that, but I really love the nerdiness of having a better backup regime then most corporations. Today, we salute you, hoarder of all that is digital.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by drnb ( 2434720 )

            I don't believe ya'll data is worth ALL that, but I really love the nerdiness of having a better backup regime then most corporations. Today, we salute you, hoarder of all that is digital.

            Well, I'm a hoarder in the sense that I've kept nearly everything I've worked on since the 1980s. Yes, I've even accessed it recently. While doing some work on an embedded system it was actually convenient to reuse some old bitmap graphics code from the early 90s.

            Some of that is work done as a consultant, enabling me to legally possess a copy of my client's software. And some employers allowed me to keep a copy of the software after I left them (Left on good terms, offered to answer questions of future m

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by twms2h ( 473383 )

      I definitely hope so, because smaller companies will only be able to buy it if it is available to consumers. And the small company I work for definitely needs drives as large as possible to be put into a RAID for our massive video and picture servers.

  • The bigger they get the scarier it is to rely on them. Impressive how far we've come density wise but have to buy two at the minimum.

    • Of course, but that's true for any kind of mass storage, also SSDs. Also hard disks become progressively more expensive per Terabyte as they get to the extreme sizes, you kinda need multiple drives to get any meaningful amount of storage. 44 Terabyte is not _that_ much these days, particularly when doing archival work.

    • If you're right, 1TB drives should last essentially forever. I'm gonna run out and buy 45 of them and make a 44 TB RAID 5 NAS. Same capacity as this silly thing, and way more reliable. Such a good idea that these people [45drives.com] even named their company after it!
  • Bigger is always better for the enterprises that need that kind of storage (and the hyperscalers wish even larger capacity, delivered yesterday if possible).
  • Fascinating how magnetic hard drives keeps improving significantly over decades, while none of the many new "wonder storage" devices delivered... where's that Petabyte duct-tape, the holographic crystals, the DNA storage?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ac22 ( 7754550 )

      They were seriously challenged by optical drives in the 80s and 90s for storage capacity, but kept on growing faster than optical could manage:

      Year Magnetic HDD capacity Optical capacity
      1956 3.75 MB —
      1982 10–100 MB 650 MB (CD)
      1995 1–2 GB 4.7 GB (DVD)
      2006 100–500 GB 25–50 GB (Blu-ray)
      2020s 20+ TB 100 GB (consumer Blu-ray)

  • Wow!!! (Score:3)

    by sarren1901 ( 5415506 ) on Saturday March 07, 2026 @04:28PM (#66028450)

    That's a lottttt of porn.

  • I wonder how small and cheap something like this could be built these days:

    https://theaviationgeekclub.co... [theaviationgeekclub.com]

    Apparently some military aircraft have exactly this solution.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dargaud ( 518470 )
      The french Rafale uses a positioning system by matching pictures of the ground using AI and pattern matching. Of course when in or above the clouds it uses something else... Auto star matching can be had as a cheap add-on for amateur telescopes nowadays.

  • HDDs still have four massive problems that I doubt will be solved anytime soon.

    1. Capacity. Seagate and other HDD manufacturers have a roadmap of reaching 100 TB by 2035. Meanwhile SSDs are heading for 4 000 TB by 2035. That is x40.

    2. Space. Three HDDs can fit up to eight E3.L drives for the same space. And those has 250 TB capacities right now. That means you can fit roughly 2 PB of storage for the same space you can fit 132 TB today. That is 15 times more storage space for the same capacity.

    3. Energy. Giv

    • Re:Too little too late... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Snard ( 61584 ) <snard12@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Saturday March 07, 2026 @05:33PM (#66028510) Homepage
      You seem to be ignoring one small factor in your comparisons: price. If you have infinite money, then certainly SSD is the way to go. But most of us do not.

      • Price right now is completely disrupted by an anomaly in the market, leading to high uncertainty. But, before OpenAI decided to bring a wrecking ball to the market, a 128 TB SSD could be had for ~$13k. That's about $100 per TB, as compared to $15-$25 per TB for HDD storage (new ofc, with used, deals can be had but market prices are much more volatile).

        These prices are a pipe dream now, but extrapolating from that market behavior, by 2035 you would be able to get a 4PB drive for, maybe, $20k. That's $5 per T

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      And what to do plan to replace it with, genius? You can't use SSDs for long term, unenergized storage unless you want to see all your data disappear. And huge HDDs are still A LOT cheaper than a comparable SSD. SSDs for speed. HDDs for backups. That hasn't changed.

      • Oh, that myth based on the old study that worn out SSDs have a low retention rate? Of course they do! ... If you store them in subpar temperatures near magnets. Otherwise, both HDD and SSD cold storage require plugging in every 6 months to make sure no bit rot has set in. If you are serious about archival, you buy a new HDD every five to ten years and format shift to that.

        Main reason HDDs are used for backups over SSDs, is because of cheap capacity. As SSDs double in capacity every other year, while HDDs ar

  • And then add that it uses HAMR shingles.. yuck. I'll take my HGST-WD CMR Helium drives all day, every day.

  • Were they leashed before?

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