Seagate’s hard drives that can store up to 44 terabytes, part of its Mozaic 4+ platform, are now deployed by hyperscalers, the company announced. The platform uses heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), a technology that boosts storage density beyond what conventional hard drive designs can support.
The rollout reflects the growing pressure on data centers to expand storage capacity as AI systems devour ever larger pools of data for AI training and long-term retention. Cloud vendors depend heavily on high-capacity HDD because they remain an economical way to store huge volumes of information.
“As AI models have evolved and generative applications have expanded, the demand for massive datasets, both real and synthetic, has become essential,” said Bob O’Donnell, president of research firm TECHnalysis Research. Higher-capacity drives, he said, are becoming a critical part of maintaining the performance and reliability of AI systems.
Heating the Disk Surface
Seagate touts the Mozaic 4+ platform as the only HAMR-based storage technology currently operating at scale in commercial data centers. The new drives store roughly 4 terabytes of storage per disk platter and incorporate a ten-platter configuration to reach the impressive 44TB capacity level.
The latest platform also incorporates a redesigned suspension structure and updated system-on-a-chip components intended to improve the precision of data recording at higher densities. These features allow data capacity increases without needing entirely new drive architectures in upcoming releases.
The Mozaic platform also reflects years of engineering work on the optical components required for HAMR technology. HAMR devices use a tiny laser integrated into the recording head to briefly heat the disk surface during the writing process. This allows data to be recorded at much higher densities than standard magnetic recording methods.
Seagate manufactures these laser components internally, an approach the company claims improves supply chain reliability and shortens the time required to qualify new drives for production.
Competitive Market
The storage expansion comes as competition intensifies in the high-capacity hard drive market. Rival manufacturer Western Digital has indicated that it plans to introduce 40TB drives later this year using an approach known as energy-assisted magnetic recording, combined with advanced shingled recording techniques.
Although the storage capacity between 40TB and 44TB may appear modest at the device level, capacity gains can have a measurable impact when installed across a complex environment. According to Seagate, upgrading storage clusters to the new drives can improve infrastructure efficiency by roughly 47% compared with older 30TB systems.
In a hypothetical one-exabyte deployment, the company estimates the increase in storage density could lower annual energy use by about 0.8 million kilowatt-hours and reduce the space needed for storage equipmenet by roughly 100 square feet.
Seagate said additional hyperscalers are testing Mozaic-based drives. The company’s long-term roadmap aims to increase capacity from today’s roughly 4TB per disk to as much as 10TB per disk in the future, potentially enabling hard drives approaching 100TB.
