The KitGuru review makes no mention of TDMR in respect of the 12TB IronWolf drive, nor do Seagate's datasheet or product manual.
https://www.seagate.com/www-content/product-content/ironwolf/en-us/docs/100818527d.pdfhttps://www.seagate.com/www-content/datasheets/pdfs/ironwolf-12tbDS1904-9-1707US-en_US.pdfHowever, the new 14TB Exos is being promoted as a TDMR drive.
I found this Seagate patent to be helpful:
Multi-sensor data transducer:
http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/pdfs/US20150043098.pdfQuote:
In some embodiments, a processing circuit evaluates the sensor signals from the respective sensors and selects a best signal for use in decoding the data. In further embodiments, the sensor signals from at least some of the sensors are combined to provide a composite readback signal that is decoded to provide the originally stored data from the track. In further embodiments, servo positioning control signals are generated from the respective sensor signals to improve the positioning of the sensors relative to the tracks. In still further embodiments, data are concurrently recovered from multiple tracks using the multiple sensors in a multi-track (e.g., two dimensional, or 2D) recording environment.
AISI, true TDMR is when data are being retrieved from two or more tracks at the same time. This would imply that the transfer rate should double, all else being equal. However, the sustained transfer rate for the IronWolf is 210MB/s which is no better than earlier models.
Therefore, ISTM that the 3-lane read channel is decoding only a single track of data, but is using all 3 read elements for tighter track positioning. If so, then is this really "TDMR"?