Seagate to produce 5TB hard drive next year, 20TB by 2020
Seagate on Monday announced that it has sold more than 1 million drives using a new recording technology that will offer consumers 5TB hard drives next year and possibly 20TB drives by 2020.
The technology Seagate is touting -- shingled magnetic recording (SMR) - is needed more than ever.
Just as NAND flash is running up against a miniaturization wall, where the circuitry has little room to continue to shrink in size, hard drives face a similar density dilemma. The data tracks on a 1TB hard-drive platter cannot afford to shrink much more, according to Seagate The theoretical limit of magnetic storage, called the superparamagnetic limit -- about 1Tbit per square inch of storage density -- is fast approaching. Increasing the density beyond that will lead to data corruption issues. Currently, Seagate's drives store data at up to 625Gbits per square inch of storage areal density.
