Seagate has revealed that it has received revenue for Exos Corvault systems during a fourth quarter and fiscal year 2023 conference call—the latest server range is equipped with heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) hard drives. We heard about evaluation samples being sent out to an important data center client around Spring time, but fresh corporate announcements have revealed that the first commercial HAMR-based systems have been picked up by paying customers. Gianluca Romano, the firm's chief financial officer stated: "Importantly, we shipped our first HAMR-based CORVAULT system for revenue as planned during the June quarter. We expect broader availability of these CORVAULT systems by the end of calendar 2023."

Seagate's chief executive, Dave Mosley, also revealed that higher capacity HAMR-based nearline hard drives have been sent out for testing in the field. He boasts that this was achieved during corporate cost cutting initiatives: "We reduced production output by approximately 25% compared with peak volume in order to drive better supply/demand dynamics and enhance profitability as the markets recover. And all of these accomplishments were made while delivering on our 30 TB+ HAMR product development and qualification milestones with volume ramp on track to begin in early calendar 2024...Initial customer qualifications are progressing well. We are on track to begin volume ramp in early calendar 2024. We are also preparing qualifications with a broader number of customers, including testing for lower capacity drives targeting VIA and enterprise OEM workloads." He also outlined plans to keep PMR and SMR hard drive technologies alive for another generation: "Development efforts on what may be our last PMR product are nearing completion and will extend drive capacities into the mid- to upper 20 TB range." Clients who are reluctant to jump onto HAMR could be offered some alternatives—24 TB+ models based on PMR+TDMR and SMR+TDMR configurations are roadmapped for release by the end of the year.

Seagate has recently published a preview of its next generation product hard drive lineup that utilize heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology. A company roadmap indicates that the first commercial release of 32 TB capacity HAMR Mach 2 drives is penciled in for a Q3 2023 window, with a short hop to increased storage (40 TB) models predicted for launch in 2024. Seagate is also expected to release 24 TB and 28 TB capacity HDDs - based on the older perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology - at some point in the near future. Technology news outlets anticipate that these two product ranges will co-exist for a while, until Seagate decides to favor its more advanced thermal magnetic storage solution. A lucky data center client has been getting hands-on time with evaluation HAMR hardware, as reported in late April. Seagate has since supplied other enterprise customers with unspecified HAMR HDD models.

Executives at Seagate have been openly discussing their HAMR products - destined to sit in new Corvault server equipment. Gianluca Romano, the company's chief financial officer, mentioned several models during a presentation at the Bank of America 2023 Global Technology conference: "When you go to HAMR, our 32-terabyte (model) is based on 10 disks and 20 heads. So same number of disks and head of the current 20-terabyte PMR...So all the increase is coming through areal density. The following one, 40-terabyte, still (has) the same 10 disks and 20 heads. And also the 50 (TB model), we said at our earnings release, in our lab, we are already running individual disk at 5 terabytes."

Seagate is celebrating the debut shipment of very sophisticated storage solutions to a preferred client (dealing in the cloud data center sector). These 30+ terabyte hard drives are based on heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology - the American data storage company is setting up its next generation Corvault range with the thermal magnetic recording methodology. The first shipment of HAMR-based drives is reported to consist of final qualification samples, but Seagate is anticipating that fully verified equipment - after trial customers give this new product lineup a thumbs-up - will be generating revenue in the coming weeks.

According to a transcript of a recent Seagate financial meeting conference call, CEO Dave Mosley mentioned a dip in business as well as a costly legal settlement, but expects company fortunes to rise due to client uptake of breakthrough storage technologies: "Beyond this cycle, we remain excited about the long-term opportunities presented by the secular growth of data and the relevance of mass capacity storage as new data-centric applications emerge and more workloads migrate to the cloud. We continue to make strong progress on our industry-leading technology road map, including launching HAMR-based products this quarter, which we believe put us in outstanding longer-term position."