Enterprise SSD technology breakthroughs mean record capacity capabilities
With the amount of data being generated continuing to grow and expand, bigger storage capacity is going to be needed to hold it all. Fortunately, storage vendors are on top of things with new record capacity devices.
In the past week, Seagate Technology launched a 30TB hard disk, featuring advanced new storage technologies to increase capacity in the same 3.5 enclosure, and KIOXIA (formerly Toshiba) launched a 245TB SSD in a 2.5-inch form factor.
Seagate announced it is shipping both 28TB and 30TB versions of its Exos M and IronWolf Pro hard drives. It has also announced plans for a 32TB and 36TB drive in the coming months. Seagate’s positioning of the two drives is Exos in the data center and IronWolf in the edge. Exos is targeted at enterprise storage uses while IronWolf is meant for network attached storage (NAS) systems used in mid-sized businesses.
Both are built on Seagate’s Mozaic3+ with advanced storage technology called HAMR, or Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording. By heating the platter to as much as 500°C, they can squeeze up to 3TB per platter. Other than that, it looks like a standard hard drive: 3.5-inch enclosure, 7,200 RPM spin rotation, and SATA III interface with 6Gbps/s transfer speeds.
The drivers are available now and are rather affordable. The 30TB Exos is just $599 on NewEgg.com.
On the enterprise solid state drive (SSD) front, KIOXIA America has expanded its high-capacity KIOXIA LC9 Series enterprise SSD lineup with the introduction of a 245.76TB NVMe SSD. The drive comes in a 2.5-inch and Enterprise and Datacenter Standard Form Factor (EDSFF) E3.L form factor and is purpose-built for the performance and efficiency demands of generative AI environments.
The KIOXIA LC9 Series SSDs is built on a 32-die stack of 2Tb QLC 3D flash memory delivers the speed, scale, and density required to support AI-centric workloads. KIOXIA LC9 Series SSDs support PCI Express 5.0, the top interface available, and are well-suited for data lakes, where massive data ingestion and rapid processing are essential.
KIOXIA LC9 Series SSDs are now sampling to select customers and will be featured at the Future of Memory and Storage 2025 conference, taking place August 5–7 in Santa Clara.
