60TB Hard Drives Arriving in 2028, According To Industry Roadmap (tomshardware.com)

(Friday October 04, 2024 @05:20PM (msmash) from the no-shortage-of-room dept.)

An anonymous reader shares a report:

> The arrival of energy-assisted magnetic recording (EAMR) technologies like Seagate's HAMR will play a crucial role in accelerating HDD capacity growth in the coming years. According to the new IEEE International Roadmap for Devices and Systems Mass Data Storage, [1]we will see 60 TB hard disk drives in 2028 . If the prediction is accurate, we will see HDD storage capacity doubling in just four years, something that did not happen for a while. Also, IEEE believes that HDD unit sales will increase.

>

> IEEE's latest HDD development roadmap spans 2022 to 2037 and covers 15 years of hard drive evolution. The arrival of HAMR in 2024 will play a pivotal role in the increase in HDD capacity (even though Western Digital has managed to stay competitive with Seagate's HAMR HDDs using a set of its technologies) over the next few years. IEEE engineers expect HDDs to leapfrog to 40TB in 2025 and 60TB in 2028, doubling capacity from 30TB in 2024. By 2037, there will be 100TB of storage space, according to IEEE.

>

> To get to those extreme capacities, HDD makers will have to increase the areal density of their platters steadily. To get to 40TB per drive, they will have to get to 2 TB/inch^2 in 2025 and then to over 4 TB/inch^2 in 2028 to build 60TB HDDs. By 2037, areal density will grow to over 10 Tb/inch^2. Increasing areal density will necessitate the use of new media, magnetic films, and all-new write and read heads.

[1] https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/storage/60tb-hard-drives-arriving-in-2028-according-to-industry-roadmap-hdd-capacity-forecast-to-double-in-four-years

Disc two (Score:2)

by test321 ( 8891681 )

With Sci-hub claiming 77 TB in 2021 ( [1]https://www.reddit.com/r/DataH... [reddit.com] ), by 2030 the disk capacity will match that of Futurama's Mars University, where non-fiction fits on a single disc ( [2]https://theinfosphere.org/Mars... [theinfosphere.org] ).

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/nc27fv/rescue_mission_for_scihub_and_open_science_we_are/

[2] https://theinfosphere.org/Mars_University_(place)#Wong_Library

The math doesn't seem to line up (Score:3)

by ddtmm ( 549094 )

They will increase the size to 60TB in 4 years, but will take another 9 years to get to 100? And the aerial capacities don't align.

> 40TB per drive, they will have to get to 2 TB/inch^2

implying 20sq in., but

> 4 TB/inch^2 in 2028 to build 60TB HDDs

implying 15 sq. in.

then

> By 2037, areal density will grow to over 10 Tb/inch^2

implying 10 sq. in.

I'm confused.

Bandwidth better catch up (Score:3)

by dynamo ( 6127 )

I don't want to be backing up my drive for a week, we will either need to start seeing internal HD interfaces with ACTUAL write speeds approaching 1TB/sec or we'll have to buy two or more with a LOT of internal suspension to avoid data corruption and a special bay that we can just pull one out of and push another into, so we can just swap a new one in to replace the old one. And of course we'd need to deal with a second internal drive and tech inside with Raid 1, and the new drive would have to be stable long enough for the mirroring to finish.

Storage. (Score:2)

by kellin ( 28417 )

Most of us won't need to see this kind of size increase in storage devices. This is clearly for data centers and cloud computing, etc, etc..

I can't imagine squeezing more data into smaller spaces will be good for the life of a drive, so data backups will be even more important.

Are HDDs still all made in one spot on Earth? (Score:2)

by Fly Swatter ( 30498 )

For that matter, are they reliable anymore? Sorry I switched to Solid State and am so far glad for not having to listen to bearing whine or bad sectors suddenly popping up and growing (hi Seagate).

I guess these are for data centers and data hoarders.