Seagate just made a storage deal that’s nothing short of colossal—two exabytes of HAMR-based hard drives sold to two of the world’s biggest tech giants. That’s two billion gigabytes, folks. While some predict the demise of hard drives, Seagate and its rival Western Digital are doubling down on innovations like HAMR (heat-assisted magnetic recording) and HDMR (heated dot magnetic recording). These technologies could push HDD capacities to a staggering 100TB, keeping them ahead of SSDs in the storage density race.
So, who are these mysterious buyers? While Seagate isn’t naming names, the usual suspects—Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta—are the prime candidates. Chinese hyperscalers? Unlikely, but not impossible. The drives in question are likely Seagate’s Exos M series, boasting capacities from 30TB to 36TB. At an estimated 500perdrive,thetotalbillforanexabyteofstoragecouldhoveraround16 million. For cutting-edge storage, that’s a steal.
But here’s the kicker: Seagate isn’t stopping there. The company recently announced plans to acquire Intevac, a HAMR specialist, to accelerate its journey toward 100TB drives. With HAMR already revolutionizing data storage by using lasers to heat disk surfaces for higher density, the future of hard drives looks anything but obsolete. Ready or not, the storage wars are heating up—literally.
