Seagate’s first hard drives with heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) are set to arrive later this year.

According to the company’s product roadmap, the first HAMR drives on order will include the world’s largest hard disk drive capacity at 20TB, TechRadar Pro(Opens in a new window) reports, and we can expect to see it in December. While we were previously made aware that both 18TB and 20TB editions were in the works, there had yet to be an official date set.

HAMR drives work as the hard drive temporarily heats up the disk material, which makes it more receptive to the magnetic mechanisms at work inside the assembly. This makes it simpler to write data to smaller areas on the hard drive and increases data density per platter.

The Exos 20+ series will be compatible as drop-in drives for 3.5-inch bays. In terms of power consumption, you can count on the HDDs to require less than 12W. They will feature a 7200RPM spindle speed with a read/write speed higher than 261 MB/s. However, little is known currently about the Exos 20+’s performance in terms of random read and write performance.

Though the Exos 20+ is an impressive first release from the company, there will be additional HAMR HDDs with larger capacities in the future. Seagate has yet to confirm how much data these upcoming HDDs will hold.

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Some Seagate customers reportedly already have their hands on and are testing prototype HAMR drives. However, these are not the 20TB releases scheduled for debut in December. It’s possible there could be recipients of the Exos 20+ by the holidays, but as of yet Seagate has not confirmed an exact date for the HDD to hit store shelves.

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