When it comes to mechanical hard drives, what usually pops up in everyone's mind is "iron bumps" full of metal materials. Recently, Japanese optical glass manufacturer HOYA invested nearly 300 million U.S. dollars to invest in the construction of new glass disc production facilities. It turns out that in addition to aluminum alloy, a considerable part of the hard disk is made of glass!

HAMR mechanical hard drives use glass disks for capacity. Why does this make IBM feel bad



HOYA is also known as TAG Heuer, and many people understand that it is a product through UV lenses on spectacle lenses or SLR camera lenses. HOYA has a wide range of business, including LCD photomasks, medical intraocular lenses, and glass disks for hard drives.


HAMR mechanical hard drives use glass disks for capacity. Why does this make IBM feel bad



Speaking of glass discs, old players may still have lingering fears about the IBM Deskstar 120GXP glass discs with an amazing repair rate. But this is not a glass fragile pot, but a problem with newly applied magnetic materials at that time. At present, many 2.5-inch mechanical hard drives use glass platters, taking advantage of the thinner and lighter glass platters.

HAMR mechanical hard drives use glass disks for capacity. Why does this make IBM feel bad




In order to break through the development bottleneck, the next generation of mechanical hard drives will widely use HAMR thermal-assisted magnetic recording or MAMR microwave-assisted magnetic recording technology. HAMR will use a laser to heat the disc to make the magnetic material on the disc enter a writable state for a short time. After writing, it will cool down and maintain the data stably. Compared with aluminum metal discs, glass discs expand less when heated and have a higher surface flatness, so they have more advantages in the HAMR era.

HAMR mechanical hard drives use glass disks for capacity. Why does this make IBM feel bad



The glass platters are not as fragile as some friends think. In addition, the magnetic heads will sweep over the platters when the hard disk is read and written, and the magnetic heads will retract to a safe position in the shutdown and standby states. In the case of a solid-state drive as a system disk, the mechanical disk will have many opportunities to enter the standby state.