According to the forecast of the American Engineering Association IEEE, by 2028 the volume of hard disk drives (HDD) will double to 60 TB, and their sales will increase to 359 million units by 2037, despite the growing popularity of SSDs. This will be affected by the introduction of technologies such as HAMR, as well as an increase in the density of recording on plates.
The main driver of volume growth will be the introduction of energy-dependent magnetic recording (EAMR) technologies, such as HAMR from Seagate, writes edition of Tom’s Hardware. It is expected that in 2024, HAMR will begin to be actively used in the production of HDDs, which will lead to a rapid increase in their capacity. IEEE analysts predict the appearance of HDDs of 40 TB in 2025 and 60 TB in 2028, and by 2037 the capacity of hard drives may reach an incredible 100 TB.
To achieve such indicators, manufacturers will have to significantly increase the density of recording on the plates. So, to create a hard disk with a volume of 40 Tbytes, a recording density of 2 Tbytes/inch2 is required, and for 60 Tbytes — more than 4 TB/inch2. By 2037, this indicator should increase to 10 TB/in2. Such extreme values will require the use of new media, magnetic films and the development of fundamentally new read/write heads.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000«To ensure the functionality of HDD read and write heads at high recording density and high operating speed, major changes are required in magnetic and non-magnetic materials, — says the IEEE document. — These changes include improvements to media and protective coatings, as well as the development of heads capable of supporting recording densities of more than 1 TB/in2. Changes in media substrate technology and the use of sub-1nm dielectric films will also be required for advanced giant magnetoresistive (GMR) and tunnel magnetoresistive (TMR) heads ».
However, that the HDD spindle speed will remain at 7200 revolutions per minute (RPM), the increase in recording density will have a positive effect on the sequential read/write speed. At the same time, HDD performance in input-output operations per terabyte (IOPS) for single-drive models is likely to decrease. However, IEEE expects hard disk drive sales to grow from 166 million units in 2022 to 208 million in 2028 and 359 million in 2037. This is due to the growing need for affordable and capacious data storage, for which HDD is an ideal solution.