Seagate: 20 TB HAMR Drives Arrive in December, 50 TB Capacities in 2026

[Rei]

i refuse to have noisy, slow mechanicals in my rig.

Then it would seem that you haven't owned a HDD in a long time. Most HDD's made in the last 5 years are VERY quiet, even the 7200RPM variants.

I have 3x external HDD, 3x 2.5" SATA HDD, 2x 2.5" PATA HDD & 2x 3.5 HDD & some range around a decade old while the rest is more than a decade old, yet none of them makes any noise beyond ambient noise even to this day.

 

[lexluthermiester]

or go back to SLC & MLC.

Yes please! That would be great!

3d NAND / V-NAND helps a bit, but not by a huge amount.

True, but only by an estimated 10% to 15%.

For example: lets say you have a 350GB drive, and 300GBs of it is used "statically" (write once, read many use case. Like videos, pictures, archived tax documents, and the like). Under older algorithms (just 5 years ago), only the "free" 50GBs was wear leveled. (IE: Dynamic wear leveling). Under today's controller algorithms, all 350GBs are wear-leveled. Those "rarely written" video files will be moved to other blocks, so that those cells can be "cycled".

This is the bigger kicker and it works. However, it works best on 3DTLC. QLC is still sub-800 p/e cycles and even advanced wear-leveling can't make the risk of data loss viable. 3DTLC is the bottom end of what can be considered acceptable for an OS drive. The only thing QLC is good for is incidental usage scenarios, IE, external drives used for backups or mass storage drive use in scenario's where write cycles are very infrequent.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Hey that's cool, if you don't need it you don't need it. Some do, like me.

Then it would seem that you haven't owned a HDD in a long time. Most HDD's made in the last 5 years are VERY quiet, even the 7200RPM variants.

Maybe they are quiet now, but slow, though i suppose that is ok for films, music etc. i don't hoard films though so mine are all on my 1tb boot M2

 

[MIRTAZAPINE]

Hey that's cool, if you don't need it you don't need it. Some do, like me.

Then it would seem that you haven't owned a HDD in a long time. Most HDD's made in the last 5 years are VERY quiet, even the 7200RPM variants.

Not really if you go high capacity variants. I got a Toshiba MG07 enterprise hdd and boy are they loud when I tested it on my usb dock. I was surprised by how loud it was it sound like metalic fan. Then again its 9 platters spinning at 7200rpm. Got a WD 14TB soon after at 5400rpm much quieter.

 

[Minus Infinity]

It's HAMR time. Can't touch that.

 

[windwhirl]

Maybe they are quiet now,

Not really if you go high capacity variants. I got a Toshiba MG07 enterprise hdd and boy are they loud when I tested it on my usb dock. I was surprised by how loud it was it sound like metalic fan. Then again its 9 platters spinning at 7200rpm. Got a WD 14TB soon after at 5400rpm much quieter.

Really depends on the exact drive model sometimes. For example, Seagate's IronWolf has two variants of 10/12 TB drives, with one of them having a seek noise level of 26-28 db, and another one ranging on 32-34 db. WD Red Plus also has a 10 TB drive with noise levels of 38 db during seek, while a 14 TB one reaches just 29 db during seek... There is a 10 TB Red Pro revision with just 20 db of idle noise, while another revision reaches 34 db, which is just insane.

Admittedly, I'm too lazy to look up Toshiba drives, since there seems to be way too many lineups...

Down below, the same table, just with the drives ordered according to their seek noise level.

There is also conflicting information regarding some Seagate drives. Some drives' datasheets inform noise levels of 18/20 db idle, but the user manual (which is what I used here) indicates 28/30. In those cases, I went with the worst case scenario.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

Really depends on the exact drive model sometimes. For example, Seagate's IronWolf has two variants of 10/12 TB drives, with one of them having a seek noise level of 26-28 db, and another one ranging on 32-34 db. WD Red Plus also has a 10 TB drive with noise levels of 38 db during seek, while a 14 TB one reaches just 29 db during seek... There is a 10 TB Red Pro revision with just 20 db of idle noise, while another revision reaches 34 db, which is just insane.

View attachment 173698
Admittedly, I'm too lazy to look up Toshiba drives, since there seems to be way too many lineups...

Down below, the same table, just with the drives ordered according to their seek noise level.
View attachment 173697

There is also conflicting information regarding some Seagate drives. Some drives' datasheets inform noise levels of 18/20 db idle, but the user manual (which is what I used here) indicates 28/30. In those cases, I went with the worst case scenario.

Wow some of them are very noisy imo and i would hate to have them in my rig.

I had a drive in my rig, and was playing a game when my mate paul came round. He said what is that noise, and it was my HDD. that was what made me decide to have no mechanicals in my new rig. I only have a 1TB m2 for boot/stuff and a 2TB m2 for games only, but i dont run out of space and it is fast and pretty quiet. If i need more space only sata ssd's but i would consider a big extenal mechanical under my desk.

 

[kayjay010101]

And? Unless you want to spend $15,000, no SSD/M.2 is getting anywhere near 20TB. Mass storage doesn't need the blazing speed of SSD's, OS boot drives do.

The ExaDrive NL says otherwise ($10,700 for 64TB, or more reasonably $5,600 for 32TB)

But I do actually agree, HDDs are still the way to go if speed is mostly irrelevant, like for mass storage. But I bet within the decade SSDs will be so affordable HDDs go the way of the dodo.

 

[windwhirl]

Wow some of them are very noisy imo and i would hate to have them in my rig.

To be fair, the really loud ones are mostly NAS-type drives, so it's not like they're the kind of drives most users would put in their desktop PCs... And as I observed while making that table, over time drives seem to receive some improvements that make them quieter.

Still, if noise is a concern, SSDs are unbeatable.

 

[Chrispy_]

They say it uses ePMR, but that doesn't rule out infecting this drive with shingles though. They can still use SMR to increase capacity and throw performance down the pan.

 

[windwhirl]

They say it uses ePMR, but that doesn't rule out infecting this drive with shingles though. They can still use SMR to increase capacity and throw performance down the pan.

Considering what happened when they introduced SMR drives without labeling them as such, I don't think they want to do that again.