With 30TB of available storage, the Seagate Exos X Mozaic 3+ is the largest hard drive any tech-savvy person can be an owner of to date—but will most likely fall into the hands of enterprises as well as data center users, especially in large quantities.
Creating this largest hard drive was made possible, thanks to ten 3TB platters, which altogether create an outstanding density of 1.742TB per square inch. Reading data on the hard drive, however, requires some advanced magnetic field reading sensors, which are considered to be the smallest and most sensitive of their kind.
Not only is the Exos X Mozaic 3+ the biggest storage media in the hard drive space, but it is also the most efficient, too, owing to the 12-nanometer integrated controller built into it.
While common intuition would suggest that it would take additional platters to go beyond what’s currently possible, Seagate Executive Vice President BS Teh said that there are no plans to increase the number of platters in the future.
The issue seemingly boils down to multiple factors, including cost, noise, reliability, power consumption, weight, and heat dissipation.
30TB of data storage is certainly massive for the average person. But as of now, the demand for the hard drive largely comes from data centers that are looking to expand their data storage by the end of Q1 2024.
Although adding more platters with future iterations of the Seagate hard drive is out of the question, Seagate CEO Dave Mosley, meanwhile, stated that there is a plan to introduce platters with 5TB capacity in the future.
The Seagate Exos X Mozaic 3+ is expected to launch commercially in Q1 2024, with an estimated price tag of $450.