Seagate has announced this week that it has begun shipping 32TB versions of its high-capacity, high-end hard drives. The second wave of hard drives based on Seagate’s heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology, the 32TB drives mark the first capacity bump for Seagate’s top-capacity drives since Seagate brought HAMR-based drives to the retail market last year.
More Capacity for More Brands
For this second wave of hard drives, Seagate is releasing 32TB models for all of its high-end hard drive families. Consequently, this includes not only the Exos family of server drives and the IronWolf Pro family of NAS drives, but for the first time the company’s SkyHawk AI video recording/surveillance drives are getting a HAMR-based drive as well. SkyHawk AI was noticeably absent from the initial wave of HAMR hard drives, where Seagate only made 30TB drives available under the Exos and IronWolf Pro brands, so this marks the SkyHawk AI brand returning to parity in terms of leading-edge capacity.
All three drives are based on the same underlying platform. And reading through Seagate’s spec sheets, it appears that these 32TB drives are based on the same Mozaic+ platform as the original wave of 30TB drives. Specifically, the areal density of the new 32TB Exos drive is listed as the 1841Gb/in2, the same as the original 30TB drive. So for their first post-HAMR capacity bump Seagate has neither added platters nor increased areal density in such a short time span – rather they seem to be releasing drives with additional capacity that was not previously available to users.
Total available capacity aside, the new 32TB drives are virtually identical to their predecessors. Seagate is using 10 platters in a helium-filled chassis, relying on conventional (CMR) recording to hold data. So these drives are fully suitable for RAID arrays and other environments where traditional hard drives are called for. Meanwhile official peak performance metrics have increased slightly – while the 30TB HAMR drives topped out at 275MB/sec, the 32TB models push that to 285MB/sec.
As with the first wave of drives, Seagate is looking to cash in on customers who need ever-more economical storage capacity. The company was already pitching the 30TB Exos drives at the AI market, and that is even more the case now with the 32TB SkyHawk AI drives, which are aimed at the NVR surveillance and security market where AI analysis is becoming increasingly common.
Available Now For $700
Following their announcement, Seagate has already made all three 32TB drives available for purchase. Officially, the MSRPs are set at $700 for the SkyHawk AI drive, $730 for the Exos drive, and $850 for the IronWolf Pro drive. However, Seagate is currently selling both the 32TB IronWolf Pro and 32TB SkyHawk AI directly for $700, so pricing is quite fluid at the moment. So is availability, for that matter: a quick look around shows that while it is easy to get a 32TB IronWolf Pro, the 30TB is hard to find at any price.
On final note, it would seem that alongside the launch of these 32TB drives, Seagate is also in the process of moving away from the “Exos M” branding they initially established for their Exos HAMR drives. While last year’s launch prominently featured the Exos M brand, Seagate has scrubbed the ‘M’ branding from their product pages; the new 32TB drives and original 30TB drives have been folded into the larger Exos brand (though Exos M still exists in the product manual). Between this, the capacity increase, and the addition of HAMR to the SkyHawk AI drives, it may be a sign that Seagate and its customers are getting more comfortable with HAMR technology.
