Seagate has released a pair of 30TB hard drives, the Exos M and IronWolf Pro, to meet the growing need for massive storage. These drives, built on the company’s Mozaic 3+ platform, use Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) to cram more data into the same physical space than ever before.
The 30TB capacity comes from HAMR, a technology Seagate has been working on for over 20 years. Unlike standard hard drives that use only magnetic fields to write data, HAMR uses a tiny laser to heat a spot on the disk for a split second. This quick heat burst lets data be written in tighter, denser patterns, 3TB per platter – 25% more than the old way. “The Exos M 30TB drive is designed to meet the increased demand for high-capacity, energy-efficient storage,” says Melyssa Banda, Seagate’s senior vice president of edge storage and services.
- Breakthrough areal density: The first hard drive to feature up to 3TB per platter, enabling massive storage capacity in the same footprint for...
- Enormous capacity: Up to 30TB of storage in an industry-standard 3.5-inch form factor.
- Time-tested excellence. Next-gen innovation: Blends 90% of trusted, proven components from previous generations with cutting-edge Mozaic 3+ technology...
Most home PCs use zippy solid-state drives (SSDs) but hard drives like these are the backbone of data centers where capacity beats speed for tasks like archiving, backups and fueling AI’s massive datasets. The Exos M is for hyperscale setups – like those used by Amazon or Google – supporting systems like Hadoop or Ceph for distributed storage. The IronWolf Pro is for network-attached storage (NAS) systems, a go-to for small businesses or hobbyists running home servers. “With AI workloads moving to edge environments, high-capacity storage becomes critical for local data processing,” Banda says.
Both drives come in 28TB and 30TB models, priced at $569.99 and $599.99 in the US, but UK prices are higher, with the Exos M 30TB at £498.99 and the IronWolf Pro at £559.99. You can buy them from Seagate’s online store or retailers like Newegg so they’re not just for big businesses.
Tests show the Exos M 30TB hitting sequential read and write speeds of 292MB/s and 289MB/s, slightly better than the 24TB drives from Seagate and Western Digital. These speeds are great for large sequential transfers like backups or streaming big datasets to AI models but not for random access tasks. Cooling features manage the laser’s heat so the drives stay reliable even under heavy use. They’re not the fastest drives out there but they’re good for what they are.
