Seagate has begun shipping its 44TB hard drives based on the Mozaic 4+ platform to selected hyperscale cloud customers. The new drives use Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) technology and represent the company’s highest-capacity HDD offering to date.
HAMR uses a nanoscale laser to briefly heat the recording surface during write operations, allowing higher areal density without overlapping tracks. Unlike Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR), this method is designed to maintain more predictable performance, particularly in mixed read and write workloads. Seagate says the Mozaic 4+ platform enables more than 4TB per platter. In a 10-platter configuration, that results in a total capacity of 44TB per drive. Based on this density, additional capacity points such as 40TB or 36TB would be technically possible, although the company has not detailed the rest of the lineup.
The company has not disclosed specific performance figures. Its earlier Exos X 30TB and 32TB models deliver sustained transfer rates of up to around 270MB/s at 7,200rpm, and similar or slightly higher performance can be expected from the 44TB versions, depending on final specifications and firmware optimisation. According to Seagate, deploying higher-capacity drives at exabyte scale can reduce data centre footprint by approximately 100 square feet. It also claims up to 47 percent improved infrastructure efficiency compared to 30TB drives and estimates annual energy savings of roughly 0.8 million kWh in large-scale deployments.
“Data has become one of the most valuable assets for enterprises, fueling business insights, enhancing productivity, and enabling competitive advantage. As the foundation of modern data center infrastructure, data storage solutions are essential to manage ever-increasing data volumes and maximize returns on investments in today’s AI driven-world,” said Dave Mosley, Seagate’s chair and chief executive officer. “Seagate’s HAMR-based Mozaic products deliver the scale, performance, and efficiency customers need to unlock the full potential of their data.”
Seagate is trying to strengthen its position by pushing ahead of Western Digital, which announced that its 40TB HDDs are coming in the second half of the year. By starting shipments of 44TB drives for customer qualification, Seagate strengthens its position in the high-capacity enterprise storage segment. Seagate’s roadmap includes a long-term target of 10TB per platter, which could enable 100TB hard drives by 2030, assuming continued progress in HAMR development and manufacturing scalability.
