Looking to upgrade your hard drive on your computer? If you’re in the market for a ton of storage, this is the biggest hard drive you can buy today.
As we generally shift to newer and larger solid-state drives (SSDs), hard drive advancements can fall out of the limelight. However, for some purposes, like big data processes, large hard disk drives (HDDs) can be the most appropriate choice for the job. The largest HDD on the market at the time of writing is Seagate’s Exos M ST36000NM003K, offering 36 terabytes (TB) of storage, split across 10 3.6 TB disks. It’s currently $799.99 for a new one on ServerPartDeals.com, or from $779.99 to $789.99 for refurbished editions. That works out between $21.66 and $22.22 per terabyte.
Seagate’s 36 TB HDD runs using a Serial Advanced Technology Attachment 6 gigabytes per second (SATA 6 Gb/s) interface, and a spindle speed of 7.2K revolutions per minute (RPM). The HDD also belongs to the Exos M range; one of the manufacturer’s enterprise ranges designed with heavy-use, high-performance, and scalability in mind. It’s not exactly the kind of hard drive you would install into your PC, so much as one made with large-scale professional data solutions and infrastructure in mind.
The Seagate Exos M 36 TB HDD is a part of the company’s Mozaic 3+ Platform, which runs on heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology. Hard drives that are a part of this platform are largely the same as other HDDs, with a few technical exceptions. One example of this is the unique magnetic layer designed to handle thermal conditions.
