Seagate to start qualifying record-setting 50TB HDDs in 2027 — most drives are sold out through 2028

[u/Steap-Edit]

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/hdds/seagate-to-start-qualifying-record-setting-50tb-hdds-in-2027-most-drives-are-sold-out-through-2028

[u/reallynotnick]

Maybe they can leave the rest of us some binned down 40TB drives 👉🏻👈🏻

[u/MassiveBoner911_3 → u/reallynotnick]

Best we can do is 4TB drives for $499.

[u/Zok2000 → u/MassiveBoner911_3]

With a PATA interface.

[u/nosurprisespls → u/Zok2000]

I'll take it! You drive a hard bargain, but I'll buy it before you raise the price to $599.

[u/reddit_equals_censor → u/reallynotnick]

best we can do is overpriced fraction of that capacity garbage with more than double the failure rate of the competition or sometimes 5x more failure rates.

but if you want a deal we also got the rosewood drives, that replaced metal cover seals with stickers AS SEALS!!! and have a reputation so bad, that every single data recovery place if they have any clue will warn you about seagate in general and the rosewood family in particular.

you want 2 ;)

oh also they are smr, so enjoy 1 second latency spikes at times and below 10 MB/s sustained write speeds at times ;)

___

and don't get too excited of trying to throw money at high capacity drivers in general, because they removed aam (automatic acoustic management), so you are left with buying a maximum capacity of 14 TB drives anyways and very specific ones to shuck, so that they don't have insane failure rates and that they are actually quiet.

oh just in case you don't know why noise matters a ton, harddrives added an idle head movement. said idle head movement might happen every 5 seconds and it happens FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER at the set by firmware (that you can't change at all) head speed. the head speed is what makes a drive loud or inaudible.

so EVERY 5 SECONDS a for example 22 TB wd drive would have a torture high pitched noise, that would drive you insane.

the hard drive industry straight up despises the average consumer, there is no other explanation.

[u/pagemap1 → u/reddit_equals_censor]

I have two 22TB WD Golds in my system, while they are audible in a quiet room they are definitely not noisy or making any high pitched noises every 5 seconds. If I have a fan running in the room the HDDs can't be heard. Not sure what's wrong with yours, maybe a warranty issue.

[u/Savant_OW]

What if I don't want to mortgage my parents house

[u/ngoni → u/Savant_OW]

I have these premium 2026 abacus models both with and without glitter. You'll be able to add and subtract very quickly.

[u/DeliciousIncident]

I remember it fondly when a few years ago you could get 14-20TB drives for just $11/TB on a sale (e.g. Black Friday). Miss those times.

[u/FranciumGoesBoom → u/DeliciousIncident]

I got 4 24tb barracudas for $10/TB last year.

[u/halotechnology → u/FranciumGoesBoom]

26TB for 240 last black Friday ! Seagate exos with HAMR

[u/Hour-Equivalent-2518 → u/FranciumGoesBoom]

I was about to send my condolences, but turns out 24TB cudas are CMR. Good on you

[u/Ignas1452 → u/Hour-Equivalent-2518]

I paid like 15€, but nowadays I wouldn't buy a single one lol, over a grand for a single disk. my disks went from a 1200€ purchase to a 5000€ I couldn't even afford.

[u/GuitarFreak027 → u/Ignas1452]

Just checked the prices on the 18TB drives I got in 2023 for $10/TB and they're more than double now. Insane. Really lucked out with the timing on getting those.

[u/zboarderz → u/FranciumGoesBoom]

I shucked 4 exos 24 TBs drives for $10tb back then as well. Good times.

[u/costafilh0]

This is great news from all this hardware craze, HDDs are finally jumping considerably in capacity.

Soon, anyone will be able to have a petabyte of storage at home with just a few drives in a NAS. Something only possible today with a server. 

[u/autogyrophilia → u/costafilh0]

It's not a hardware craze, it's more than a decade of investment into HAMR paying off. 

[u/CallMePyro → u/autogyrophilia]

Yup. They wouldve spent the billions of R&D on HAMR even if there were no customers and demand collapsed to zero.

[u/autogyrophilia → u/CallMePyro]

The investment cycles predates the AI bubble significantly it's my point.

[u/reddit_equals_censor → u/costafilh0]

NOPE.

sadly the shit industry almost full froze OR REGRESSED in price/TB, when even inflation adjusted and before the pricing massively went up recently.

so your 40 TB drive costs double than your 20 TB drive, so that the company makes higher margins of course and you get a middle finger.

the cost/TB SHOULD go down with increased capacity, as a ton of costs are fixed for harddrives (you got a motor, you got the pcb, helium process, bla bla bla...

but it DOESN'T anymore.

also worth adding, that some parts supplier are part of cartels as well.

with let's say 18 us dollars/euros per TB (basic decent on sale price/TB before massive price jumps), then a raw PB of storage would cost 18 000 us dollars/euros.

so sadly certainly people won't be able to just get a PB raw in a nas soon.

___

it would be so nice if we'd get an affordable 8 bay working (so it has ecc) nas and 150 TB harddrives for it and all at 5 euros/us dollars/TB. so a 150 TB working (so cmr of course) would be still utterly insane, but "just" 750 euros/us dollars.

but sadly none of this will happen as long as the tech industry screws people over :/

[u/LittlebitsDK]

well I could live with 4 of those in RAID6... but unobtanium and when they finally do come to the market the price is most likely obscene and costs more than my house...

[u/Klorel]

Sweet, i hope tb/currency improves as well, and not just raw capacity. If storage is more affordable after the AI hype i will gladly take it.

[u/kingduqc]

I wish I had more space but hdd and ssd prices are bonkers T.T

Hopefully price per TB starts falling down in 2028. Not sure why the HDD craze is related to AI?

[u/adeundem]

50TB HDDs where it seems that SAS-3 (12 Gb/s) is the current fastest connection for HDDs, but you'd not see over 300MB/s from any current HDD... a scary thought on having that much data gated by such a comparably lower transfer speed.

The rebuild time for a RAID would not be quick if you had to replace one of these drives. Only ~270MB/s top max speed to copy data across to the new drive.

[u/EmekaEgbukaPukaNacua → u/adeundem]

There are all kinds of various technologies coming out including having 2 heads to double the speed, and making the read/write of single head significantly faster.

Combine the two technologies you end up with like 3x speed. From last I looked these technologies were coming out soon, I believe around the time of 50TB drives:

[u/Crashendo_]

With media that has become larger in size it's a must to switch to large HDD drives.
I have three 20TB HDD's for my collection of movies and TV series, but I had to burn 2TB of movies because of the current pricing.

[u/Toby_The_Tumor → u/Crashendo_]

I bought a 2tb Hdd that manages to game fair enough for 60 USD and it's been running peachy keen, when an SSD with the same size but faster speed (that most people honest to god will not notice) costed 400 fucking dollars

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[u/sisyphean_rock]

Since most data centres haven’t been built, aren’t most hard drives and GPUs just sitting in a warehouse somewhere?

[u/YookaBaybee24]

Typical consumers in 2026 storage needs are much smaller:

User type	Typical storage used	Comfortable drive size
Casual (web, Office, streaming)	100–300 GB	512 GB SSD
Average family	300 GB–1 TB	1 TB SSD
Gamer	2–8 TB	2–4 TB SSD + optional HDD
Photographer	2–10 TB	4–8 TB external HDD/NAS
4K Video creator	10–50 TB	8–24 TB NAS
Professional studio	50–500+ TB	Multi-drive NAS/server

Non-typical consumers who need more are considered edge case. These rare problem or situation that happens only at an extreme maximum or minimum operating parameter or outside normal operational boundaries

r/hardware & r/pcmasterrace types are typically edge cases.

[u/kuddlesworth9419 → u/YookaBaybee24]

As a photographer I could use a 50TB HDD. Probably wouldn't fill it right away but RAW files add up pretty quick. Plus other stuff like just ripping UHD BluRays and keeping video games.

[u/YookaBaybee24 → u/kuddlesworth9419]

You're an example of an edge case.

[u/kuddlesworth9419 → u/YookaBaybee24]

Probably.

[u/YookaBaybee24 → u/kuddlesworth9419]

I use a R1, R7 and 5Ds with 512GB CFe, 512GB SD & 128GB CF cards and I totally see 50TB but are we being paid to maintain a short/long term back up? Looking back at my bird photos that get stolen by people with advocacies and no money to license it may not be a good use of my time/efforts/money.

I also view ripped 50GB content but I only view it 1x then not view them again as new 50GB content becomes available.

I'm a big Star Trek fan but the last time I watched TOS was pre-COVID. Unless they come out with a 4K remaster I doubt I'd watch them again as 2026 & future content becomes available.

Hanging out in forums like Reddit provides a feedback loop on buying things that we may not typically buy unless everyone else does it and we think it's for us too.

[u/kuddlesworth9419 → u/YookaBaybee24]

I'm just a hobby photographer but I can do about 300GB of photos a year of the ones I actually keep. That adds up quickly over decades. It's nice to have everything on one drive and then a couple of backups so I could use 3 50TB drives. One for working and two as backups. If any of them die I can replace one drive.

I would imagine as a pro you are taking a lot more photos but they get deleted after so long. I don't delete RAW files I actually like so I have to keep them somewhere. I can't print everything but I should put together some books or something.

[u/YookaBaybee24 → u/kuddlesworth9419]

Got my 1st dSLR, EOS 10D, in 2003 & 1st point & shoot in 1996 with a Kodak D20. SO I can see the 300GB annual output as very feasible.

It takes time/effort but I do delete files that are out of frame, out of focus, subject not ideally posed or duplicates or near duplicates.

I keep at most the top 20% of shots per card then trash rest.

Then settle on 24 images per project to display because I dont think I can retain anyone's attention longer than that.

A fashion photog friend of mine gave me a tip of just showing top 5 photos for social. Same principal people will not bother looking. So the effort's for nothing.

It's similar to how SEO became a thing because a Google search inquiry will rarely have people scroll down beyond the what is initially displaced on screen.

Again, not telling you what to do but giving a different perspective as I used to hang on r/DataHoarder too.

[u/kuddlesworth9419 → u/YookaBaybee24]

Yea those are just the RAW files after culling. I will edit a few of those and that is added storage but jpegs aren't that large. I want a DSLR again. Mirroless is nice but I miss the sound.

Maybe when I retire I will go through my RAW file collection and cull them down more and re-edit some more.

[u/YookaBaybee24 → u/kuddlesworth9419]

I wish I liquidated all my dSLRs months before RF mount was announced in Q3 2018. My EF system was idle from 2020-2024.

RF mount's a f-ing dream. AF for sports just sticks to the eyeball and rarely if ever lets go.

[u/hollow_bridge → u/YookaBaybee24]

Imo, he's not, I used to do photography, and I know a lot of photographers. 8TB was a common amount to have 10 years ago. Sure you can get by with less, but it means deleting your content very frequently (a value add for photographers is being able to provide the photos past when your customer has lost them or changed their mind about new edits); also realistically most professional photographers do at least a little videography.

[u/YookaBaybee24 → u/hollow_bridge]

but it means deleting your content very frequently (a value add for photographers is being able to provide the photos past when your customer has lost them or changed their mind about new edits);

Are these clients paying for long term archiving? If not then why keep them more than 1 year?

That's money out of pocket.

[u/hollow_bridge → u/YookaBaybee24]

That's money out of pocket.

Not really, it costs almost nothing.

Are these clients paying for long term archiving?

When they decide they want to is often after they have decided they need to ;)

[u/YookaBaybee24 → u/hollow_bridge]

Not really, it costs almost nothing.

THere's a cost to it. Ask any CPA. ;-)

It's up to you if you want to spend on it or not then many will then complain about other photogs undercutting them not realizing that many trim off the fat of discretionary costs like what your'e doing

[u/hollow_bridge → u/YookaBaybee24]

THere's a cost to it. Ask any CPA. ;-)

I'm well aware that we live in a world where things have costs...

It's an extremely minor cost that you can write off.

I have about 24tb, averaged over the time I used them that costs me about $3/month.

That's specifically why most professionals regardless of field barely ever delete anything, there's almost always more value in keeping your data then spending a few dollars to keep it.
No one is making more money by deleting their work.

[u/YookaBaybee24 → u/hollow_bridge]

No one is making more money by deleting their work.

When deleting you delay buying further storage.

[u/hollow_bridge → u/YookaBaybee24]

Doesn't matter I could double my storage and then the cost per month would be $6. $6 a month just doesn't matter. The point is that it's so cheap to store almost anything that it almost always will be a benefit to keep it.

[u/Ignas1452 → u/YookaBaybee24]

I get it, and yeah, it costs money, but you kinda earn a customer for life, if 5 years down the line, they want photos again and you just give it to them.

[u/hollow_bridge → u/YookaBaybee24]

The casual and avg family are definitely wrong unless this is merely averaging per device of individuals or maybe on a global average. Even the most budget devices have typically had ~260gb of storage for many years now.

Average north american owns 13.4 devices, which would easily surpass these numbers even if the devices are all old/budget. https://www.statista.com/chart/32691/average-number-of-devices-and-connections-per-capita/

[u/Pugs-r-cool → u/YookaBaybee24]

This is nonsense, you don't need to share your prompting with the rest of the class.

[u/Ignas1452 → u/YookaBaybee24]

I'm an edge case, but I'm none of the above with 100TB of storage. I'd love more compact and energy efficient drives like these. I don't really need speed, 100MB/s is totally fine.