Seagate's hard disk roadmap shows that the HAMR technology will enter mass production next year, with the company to estimate Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) HDDs to reach the 50TB capacity by 2026.

Looking at the graph below, which was showcased to investors during Seagate's presentation of the FYQ1 2020 results, the HAMR technology will lead to
30+TB hard disks somewhere between calendar year 2023 and 2024. The older Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) HDDs will see their capacity top at 18TB in 2020, and 20TB Shingled magnetic recording (SMR) drives are expected before 2021.

The highlight of the presentation is Seagate's 50TB+ target by 2026 using HAMR technology.

These latest predictions are more conservative that those the company had given in the recent past. Seagate's predictions a year ago had promised 100TB drives by 2025.

During Seagate's recent conference call, the company's CEO Dave Mosley said that the company is currently "successfully scaling exabyte capacity and executing the company's fastest ever production ramp on a nearline drive at 16 terabytes." He added that the company is "on track to introduce HAMR and MACH.2 dual-actuator technologies to drive areal density and scale performance with capacity to deliver lower total cost of ownership to our customers over the next decade."

"As drive densities increase multi-actuator technology is required to maintain fast access to data and scale drive capacity without compromising performance. We generated revenue from our MACH.2 dual actuator solutions for the first time in the September quarter. We are working with multiple customers to qualify these drives, including a leading US hyperscale customer, who is qualifying the technology to meet their rigorous service level agreements without having to employ costly hardware upgrades. We expect to see demand for dual actuator technology to increase as customers transition to drive capacities above 20 terabytes," Seagate's CEO said.

Seagate's MACH.2 tech was first announced in December 2017, and was demonstrated in March 2018. MACH.2 solutions have been in validation by several customers since September this year, said the Seagate CEO, to ensure they "meet stringent service levels".

"Today, Seagate is the only company mass producing 16-terabyte drives, which are the capacity benchmark for the industry. We are preparing to ship 18-terabyte drives in the first half of calendar year 2020 to maintain our industry capacity leadership. We are also driving areal density leadership with our revolutionary HAMR technology, which enables Seagate to achieve at least 20% areal density CAGR over the next decade. We remain on track to ship 20-terabyte HAMR drives in late calendar year 2020," Mosley added.