2020 could be an especially great year for data hoarders. Seagate, for one, is planning to ship an 18 TB and 20 TB hard drive in the first and second half of next year, respectively. The former is based on the 16 TB Exos drive’s nine-platter design, but the latter will utilize shingled magnetic recording (SMR). Seagate has also teased a 20 TB drive that relies on heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) for late 2020.
Right now, select Seagate customers are qualifying HAMR-based 16 TB HDDs, so they will likely be ready to deploy 20 TB HAMR drives as soon as they are available. It is noteworthy that Seagate is readying HAMR HDDs with both one and two actuators, as to offer the right performance and capacity for different customers.