Showa Denko begins to produce 1.3TB platters for high-end HDDs

Showa Denko (SDK), an independent producer of platters for hard disk drives, has begun to manufacture its seventh-generation 1.10TB – 1.30TB platters for high-capacity hard drives. The move will allow Seagate Technology, as well as other makers of HDDs, to introduce storage devices with up to 9TB capacity.

Showa Denko’s seventh-generation PMR [perpendicular magnetic recording] platters for 3.5” hard disk drives with 1.10TB – 1.30TB capacity will be especially useful for Seagate and Toshiba Corp. since the companies do not manufacture high-capacity platters in-house and cannot offer HDDs of very high capacities, unlike Western Digital and HGST. SDK’s seventh-generation PMR technology will also enable 670GB platters for 2.5” hard disk drives.

Although both Seagate Technology and Western Digital produce their own platters for hard disk drives, only Western Digital manufactures high-capacity platters. Seagate uses its own platters for mainstream hard drives, whereas all of its high-end/high-capacity offerings are based on Showa Denko’s hard drive media.

Platters of 1.1TB – 1.3TB capacities will enable Seagate to make six-platter HDDs with up to 7.8TB capacities, whereas WD/HGST will be able to build seven-platter hard drives with up to 9.1TB capacities.

It is noteworthy that SDK’s seventh-generation 3.5” PMR platters offer capacities comparable to platters based on the shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology. PMR platters enable higher performance than SMR platters.

SDK is the world’s largest independent HD media supplier, it has about one quarter share of the global market.

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KitGuru Says: Seagate, Toshiba and WD/HGST are expected to introduce their new high-capacity HDDs based on SDK’s new platters in the coming months.

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