In the upcoming years, Energy-Assisted Magnetic Recording (EAMR) technologies—such as Seagate’s HAMR—will greatly accelerate the expansion of HDD capacity.
The availability of 60 TB hard disk drives is anticipated by the IEEE International Roadmap for Devices and Systems by the year 2028.
In just four years, HDD storage capacity would have doubled, a rate not seen in a long time.
HDD Capacity To Increase by 2037
Additionally, the IEEE projects that HDD unit sales will eventually rise, reversing a sales downturn that lasted for ten years.
The newest IEEE HDD development plan covers from 2022 to 2037, covering 15 years of developments in hard disk technology.
Increasing HDD capacity will be greatly aided by the introduction of HAMR technology in 2024, even though Western Digital will continue to be competitive with its current technologies.
According to IEEE, HDD capacities will soar to 40 TB by 2025 and 60 TB by 2028. It is anticipated that HDD storage would reach 100TB by 2037. HDD makers will need to gradually raise areal density to 2 TB/in² by 2025, 4 TB/in² by 2028, and more than 10 TB/in² by 2037 in order to reach these capacities.
Higher areal densities will require new read/write heads, magnetic films, and media advancements.
Improvements To Magnetic and Nonmagnetic Materials
Along with improvements to disk media, read and write head performance will require improvements to magnetic and nonmagnetic materials.
Future HDDs will be able to achieve the high densities and performance needed thanks to new media substrate technologies and dielectric films that are thinner than 1 nm.
It is anticipated that businesses like as Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital would advance; Seagate has made plans to release 40TB HDDs and 4TB platters by 2025 public.
HDDs will see an increase in sequential read/write speeds despite staying at 7200 RPM because of their greater area density; however, single-actuator drives may see a loss in per-TB IOPS performance.
According to the IEEE, HDD unit sales could reach 359 million by 2037, up from 166 million in 2022 and 208 million in 2028.
If this surge materializes, it will buck a long-term pattern of diminishing HDD sales, which have been fueled by the demand for reasonably priced bulk storage with respectable performance.
