Western Digital plans for more Energy-Assisted Tech for 24 TB and Beyond!

Western Digital has been promoting its Microwave-Assisted Magnetic Recording or MAMR technology for over a couple of years now and aims to move over to more energy-assisted technologies in next-gen, higher-capacities data-center drives.

Western Digital plans to use EAMR or Energy Assisted Magnetic Recording for their 18 TB and 20 TB drives!

The reason why the MAMR technology isn’t being featured in these drives is because of Western Digital’s decision to use the right technology at the right time. Western Digital’s plans to use both MAMR and HAMR or Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording in future drives when the technology will allow for it. These drives do plan to use EAMR or Energy Assisted Magnetic Recording, which will allow for higher capacities and areal density when compared to drives without EAMR.

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Western Digital is planning to use microwaves to change their coercivity (MAMR) which allows for larger capacities while both Western Digital and Seagate admit that (HAMR) utilizes a laser to heat the hard drives platter which would enable a higher areal density. Western Digital has invested a large amount of money into the different forms of EAMR technologies. Western Digital’s Ultrastar HC550 HDDs will be the first of many products offering to use this a type of partial EAMR technology which does allow an increase in areal density without having to fully replace the drives heads and platters like how MAMR will require to be fully implemented.

EPMR has altered Western Digitial’s roadmap slightly but hasn’t changed the overall development philosophy, and the higher capacity drives that Western Digital plans to create will need to have some Energy-Assisted Magnetic Recording included in them. Currently, Western Digital is planning to use the MAMR type of EAMR to try and create 24 TB and 30 TB drives.

Siva Sivarm, the current president of technology and strategy at Western Digital, said this “The 18 TB product that is going out this December would use a variant of the MAMR technology. We are agnostic as to which technology we will have to succeed in the long term. We will introduce the right technology at the right point when it gets to 24 TB and 30 TB. We see a path to get to 50 TB in our hard drive roadmap. As we go to 50 TB, we will introduce the right technology at the point when it makes sense.” at the Wells Fargo Technology, Media and Telecommunications summit earlier in December.