If we want the largest possible capacity in a single storage device, it is clear that the best option is to go for a hard drive today. Not only because of the fact that at large quantities the cost per gigabyte is much lower than on an SSD. However, we wonder. Why don’t we see 100TB capacity hard drives? Well, the answer is not only due to the fact that such capacity is not in demand, but rather due to technical complications that we are going to explain below.
Obviously, when we talk about no demand, we are not referring to everyday users who have a computer at home, since a 100TB hard drive for backup in certain professional worlds would be a godsend. However, for the moment we have to “make do” with drives of up to 30 TB on the market based on HAMR technologies. Which is the limit that allows us to reach today’s technology.
100TB hard drives require very expensive technology
Which is called HDMR, whose use allows to store 1.55 Terabits per cm², a figure that is up to ten times higher than the PMR technology used by commercial hard drives sold today in PC stores. Such a density of information makes positioning the hard disk head very complex and that is that a simple vibration can place its needle in a sector of the platter that is not to be read or written, causing huge failures in the face to information storage.
Let’s not forget that the system needs to know the correct position of the files on the hard drive for when it needs to copy them from the drive to RAM. It is more than obvious that it is not convenient to copy inappropriate information. Therefore, manufacturers have to add mechanisms to reduce noise and vibrations for units of this capacity, which makes them even more expensive.
In other words, 100TB hard drives have not arrived yet due to the fact that a good enough level of reliability for data storage and access cannot yet be offered. So today they are a true utopia whose launch is expected in 2030. Honestly, we do not see demand in the consumer market for units of such capacity in the coming years, that is, for home PCs, both portable and desktop. desktop. We don’t really expect HDDs to evolve much in the coming years in terms of capacity.
The demand for hard drives will change the market.
Very soon we will see how a 1 TB SSD will have a much lower cost than a 1 TB HDD, which will lead to the definitive replacement of these and thus things will progress with hard drives with no other option than to scale up. due to the fact of not being able to flee downwards in terms of costs. Not surprisingly, for quite some time now the storage offered as standard in new systems is not greater than 2 terabytes, a figure that manufacturers have kept stable for quite some time
However, such a transition will not be easy and the demand for HDDs will not decline in the next few years, but rather will be displaced by the fact that flash memory does not have the capacity to perpetually maintain storage. One of the most underestimated advantages of hard drives and that will be key so that the information is not lost over time.