Breakthrough HDD storage tech for big data ‘ready for prime time’
The announcement, which was made at the company’s “Innovating to Fuel the Next Decade of Big Data” event, included a demonstration of the what is said to be the industry’s first microwave-assisted magnetic recording (MAMR) HDD. MAMR is an “energy assisted” recording technology that the company says offers the reliability and cost profile to meet the demands of data center operators while having the potential to accelerate areal density and cost improvements to an estimated average of 15 percent per year.
“As the volume, velocity, variety, value and longevity of both Big Data and Fast Data grow, a new generation of storage technologies are needed to not only support ever-expanding capacities, but ultimately help our customers analyze and garner insights into our increasingly connected universe of data,” says Mike Cordano, president and chief operating officer at Western Digital. “Our ground-breaking advancement in MAMR technology will enable Western Digital to address the future of high capacity storage by redefining the density potential of HDDs and introduce a new class of highly reliable, ‘ultra-high capacity’ drives.”
MAMR technology is based on the use of a “spin torque oscillator” (STO) located near the write pole of a disk drive’s read/write head that is used to generate a microwave field that increases the ability to record data at ultra-high density without sacrificing reliability. The electromagnetic field generated by the STO allows data to be written to the perpendicular magnetic media at a lower magnetic field.
MAMR technology could offer a storage density of over four terabits per square inch over time, the company says, and promises to enable hard drives with 40 TB of capacity and beyond by 2025. The company expects to begin shipping ultra-high capacity MAMR HDDs in 2019 for use in data centers that support big data applications across a full range of industries.
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