Seagate claims that their HAMR technology that they have been developing is ready for real-world application and they will have 20TB+ Drives within 2019. In contrast, today the largest capacity drive available to the channel is 14TB.
High Capacity hard drives, with the same footprint, are essential for high-density datacenters. Prices are sure to fall as Seagate introduces bigger drives.
Here is a comparison of Cost per TB for currently available Hard drives, this table is compiled based on the NAS grade drives and shows a similar trend for both the Industry Titans - 4TB is the most cost-effective drive when it comes to Cost/TB.
For simplicity, I have considered the 4TB price as the unit price, and all other prices are shown in relation to 4TB. This would show the true relation of pricing to each other, irrespective of which tier you buy the drives at.
As evident from the table
- 4TB and 8TB have the lowest Cost per TB. 8TB is almost approaching the 4TB cost/tb.
- 2TB has the highest cost/tb. Its 27% higher than a 4TB drive
- 10TB is just 5% higher than 4TB. This could be the ideal drive for high-density datacenters
| Capacity | Cost/tb (Compared to 4TB) |
| 2TB | 1.27 |
| 3TB | 1.08 |
| 4 TB | 1.00 |
| 6 TB | 1.04 |
| 8 TB | 1.01 |
| 10 TB | 1.05 |
