eRacks NAS Servers Now Support 32TB HAMR Drives - Over 3 Petabytes in a Single Rack

Open-source rackmount NAS from $1,995 - HAMR technology delivers 25% more storage per bay than conventional CMR drives. End Quote

(1888PressRelease) May 24, 2026 - eRacks Systems today announced that its full rackmount NAS lineup now supports 32TB HAMR (Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording) drives. The upgrade pushes maximum raw capacity to 3.26 petabytes in a single 4U chassis and is available now in the eRacks/NAS configurator.

Most data center drives today use CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording), which tops out at 20-26TB per 3.5-inch spindle. HAMR drives briefly heat the recording surface with a laser before writing, enabling higher bit density on the same physical media. The result is 32TB per drive, available today in Seagate's IronWolf Pro HAMR lineup.

For buyers choosing between drive generations: a 102-bay eRacks/NAS100 loaded with 32TB HAMR drives holds 3.26 petabytes raw. The same chassis with 26TB CMR drives holds 2.6PB. Same rack footprint. Same power budget. An additional 660TB at no extra infrastructure cost.

All eRacks NAS servers run full Linux (Ubuntu), support ZFS, TrueNAS, Ceph, MinIO, and OpenMediaVault, and carry no vendor OS licensing fees. The lineup spans 11 models from the 4-bay NAS4 at $1,995 to the 102-bay NAS100 at $29,995, with ECC RAM standard across all configurations.

On-premise NAS compares favorably against cloud storage at scale. Storing 100TB on Amazon S3 costs approximately $27,600 per year in recurring fees. A comparable eRacks/NAS24 (24 bays, 100TB+ usable) starts at $8,995 - a one-time purchase that pays for itself in under four months.

eRacks Systems has designed, built, and shipped custom open-source servers since 1999. Systems are configured to order in Fremont, CA. The full NAS lineup is available at https://eracks.com/products/rackmount-nas-servers/ and https://eracks.com

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