Updated 17/02 05:20 PT: Seagate contacted us to inform us that not all components of the Mozaic 3+ HDD are manufactured in-house. Some are outsourced.
When Seagate officially announced its first high-capacity hard drive with heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), it was implied that all of its components would be manufactured in-house. However, according to a new report in the Nikkei Shimbun, Seagate has teamed up with Sony Group to manufacture laser diodes for HAMR write heads. This could indicate that Seagate will rely on Sony's laser diode as a secondary source rather than putting all its eggs in one basket.
These laser diodes are used in 3.5-inch HDDs that can hold more than 30 TB of data and refer to Seagate's Mozaic 3+ hard drive platform. Sony Semiconductor Solutions plans to begin manufacturing diodes in May, and the first Mozaic 3+ HAMR drives are expected to ship in the first quarter, making SSS the second source for these diodes. There is a high possibility that it will.
In a HAMR HDD, a nanophotonic laser diode heats a small portion of the drive media to a temperature of 400°C to 450°C to reduce the coercivity before a plasmonic writer writes data to this area. Seagate does not disclose the exact characteristics of the write head, and information about the exact temperature comes from older publications.
To set up new production lines for these diodes, Sony plans to invest approximately 5 billion yen ($33 million) in a facility in Miyagi Prefecture, located in northern Honshu, Japan, and a factory in Thailand.
Seagate's Mozaic 3+ HAMR-based platform could potentially enable hard drives with capacities of 30 TB or more. Seagate announced in January that Exos hard drives with HAMR in capacities of 30TB or more are expected to begin shipping in bulk later this quarter, following completion of customer evaluations of the new HDDs. These drives are primarily targeted at hyperscale cloud data centers and mass storage. Although these HDDs offer the ultimate capacity point, sales volumes of HAMR-based drives are not expected to increase anytime soon. Seagate predicts that 1 million drives will be shipped in the first half of 2024.
Meanwhile, HAMR-based Mozaic 3+ storage technology supports a variety of products including enterprise HDDs, NAS drives, and video and imaging application (VIA) markets. As a result, plans are in place for IronWolf and SkyHawk HDDs with HAMR technology. That said, the volume of HAMR-based drives continues to grow, and this is when Seagate requires additional diodes.
