Seagate to Discontinue 7200rpm 2.5" Drives

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Seagate has confirmed that it will no longer manufacture 2.5” 7200 RPM drives by the end of this year. Seagate cites the falling prices of SSD drives as the major contributing factor in cutting its line of 7200 PRM drives from production. The announced cuts will not affect Seagate’s performance hard drive market.

In another five years, short of a new explosion in storage intensive files, we will likely reach the point where everything becomes pure SSD because the cost and performance will be better than any conventional or hybrid solutions.
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That makes sense for laptops. If you are concerned with performance, you will get an SSD. If you aren't, then a 5400-5900rpm drive should do just fine.

I think regular hard drives still have a long life ahead of them for storage purposes in desktops and servers.
 
GotNoRice said:
That makes sense for laptops. If you are concerned with performance, you will get an SSD. If you aren't, then a 5400-5900rpm drive should do just fine.

I think regular hard drives still have a long life ahead of them for storage purposes in desktops and servers.
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As long as there is still one maker for these I will be happy. SSD's are still more for less space (considerable less space) and 5400/5900 rpm drives suck compared to 7200.

When ever there is a laptop purchase I always say its a good idea to go for the same priced, less spaced 7200 over the 5400.
 
Yeah, the need for 7200rpm drives is being squeezed on 2 sides in laptops:

SSDs for pure performance and smaller SSD cache drives + regular HDD. The price sensitive segments can do with slower hard drives.
 
How much is a 500GB/1TB SSD compared to the same size in a 7200 RPM platter?

Yeah, thought so. Really dumb move Seagate. While the time will come it is not here yet. Doubt it will be here by the end of the year either.
 
Trimlock said:
SSD's are still more for less space (considerable less space)
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You're missing the entire point of SSDs: SPEED. You get less space, but you get incredible speed. Bootup is much faster. Programs load almost instantly. Transfers in a snap.
 
necrosis said:
How much is a 500GB/1TB SSD compared to the same size in a 7200 RPM platter?

Yeah, thought so. Really dumb move Seagate. While the time will come it is not here yet. Doubt it will be here by the end of the year either.
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I don't think many people are expecting price or capacity parity between the two yet. Even the first post states that it will take years for SSDs to get there.

7200rpm laptop drives have always been a niche product, although it is nice to have the option. Just buy a Toshiba or Hitachi/WD 7200rpm drive if you want one. There's likely to be stock of even Seagate 2.5" 7200rpm drives available for a while after it stops production.

Recently SSDs in the 250/256GB range have been hitting the $150 level. 7200rpm 2.5" Seagate drives are only at a 4:1 per GB price advantage on average. The writing is on the wall.
 
Red Machine D said:
You're missing the entire point of SSDs: SPEED. You get less space, but you get incredible speed. Bootup is much faster. Programs load almost instantly. Transfers in a snap.
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uhh...I think he's well aware of that. Not everything needs more speed, yet can still take up tons of room. So, unless it gets a lot cheaper, there is still a need for cheaper, bigger drives, even if slower.
 
necrosis said:
How much is a 500GB/1TB SSD compared to the same size in a 7200 RPM platter?

Yeah, thought so. Really dumb move Seagate. While the time will come it is not here yet. Doubt it will be here by the end of the year either.
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i doubt it is dumb, i am sure they have numbers to back that sales of the drives arent that great, if it was a money maker for them they wouldn't stop..

how many people need 1T laptop drives.. go get an external one.
 
GotNoRice said:
That makes sense for laptops. If you are concerned with performance, you will get an SSD. If you aren't, then a 5400-5900rpm drive should do just fine.

I think regular hard drives still have a long life ahead of them for storage purposes in desktops and servers.
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SSDs are overpriced. 5900RPM drives are too slow.

Laptop drives in general, however, are slow, because of Imaginary Property Patents that make it illegal to have an option to disable acoustic management. As such, none of them have an acceptable seek time.
 
This is just a sneaky sheeps move in wolfs clothing.

The demand on SSD storage as it relates to mobile devices will only skyrocket. I've read reports that the supply chain for this type of memory will remained strained for the next 2 - 3 years until new major plants scheduled to open in 2015 - 2016 and beyond will open. This is taking into account current manufactures increasing production and adding additional production lines on site.

Profits exploded for manufactures of mechanical storage in recent years due to the flooding from a handful of years back.

They are simply being creative and re-creating flood like conditions, maybe even on paper to again be able to increase prices that are expected to fall from competition over the coming years.

Do not be surprised to see other manufactures announce the scaling back of mechanical storage production in the near future. This again is a flood as in flood of manufactures racing to announce cutbacks to protect their bottom line in the future. Flood 2.0

The educated end user as well as the industry know full well that because of demand flash memory in regards to SSD storage, mechanical storage will continue to be the most cost effective route for the foreseeable future.
 
Red Machine D said:
You're missing the entire point of SSDs: SPEED. You get less space, but you get incredible speed. Bootup is much faster. Programs load almost instantly. Transfers in a snap.
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Except if you NEED both speed and space, Seagate is saying tough luck.

The current laptops I buy for the office have 750GB 7200 RPM drives, and I'd go for 1TB drives if they where available in 7200 RPM from the vendor. 5400 RPM would be too slow, and I've yet to see a 750GB/1TB SSD at a reasonable price.

Based on my experience, Seagate is probably dropping them due to the high failure rate.
The only 750GB laptop drives that have failed on me are Seagates.
Much happier with Western Digital, faster and more reliable.
 
I don't see SSD's coming down close to the price of mechanical drives for quite some time. And though they are faster,I'm wary of their reliability at this point.
 
Red Machine D said:
You're missing the entire point of SSDs: SPEED. You get less space, but you get incredible speed. Bootup is much faster. Programs load almost instantly. Transfers in a snap.
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No I never missed the point. Thanks for spelling out the obvious though.
 
michael.pa2 said:
I don't see SSD's coming down close to the price of mechanical drives for quite some time. And though they are faster,I'm wary of their reliability at this point.
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I think you are missing something. Right now the amount of space consumers really "NEED" is not aligned with mechanical drives. A typical consumer can easily get away with ~200GB unless they like linux distros. Furthermore, with some of the newer tech with a smaller SSD+ slow mechanical is nearly the same cost as a big 7200 RM. And being worried about SSD reliability is borderline FUD at this point. It almost feels like well sometime way back when they were bad and therefore they must always be bad. Reminds of me of the IBM desktsar days.
 
There are other applications for laptop sized hard drives besides laptops.
 
nutzo said:
Except if you NEED both speed and space, Seagate is saying tough luck.

The current laptops I buy for the office have 750GB 7200 RPM drives,.
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Why would office laptops need 750G harddrives is my question....

everything should be stored locally in the office for security and backup...especially if the laptops leave the office grounds, and people should be remoting into work
 
MrGuvernment said:
Why would office laptops need 750G harddrives is my question....

everything should be stored locally in the office for security and backup...especially if the laptops leave the office grounds, and people should be remoting into work
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I'm pretty sure it depends on the type of job?

Anyways, the consumer doesn't just 'need' 200gb's, everything being done in HD these days, even my mom is using more then 250gb's, which a 250gb SSD is still more then a 600gb 7200. Certain jobs could use the speed of SSD's, enthusiasts want SSD speed, people looking for cheap performance still want 7200. If I wanted to get my current laptop with an SSD, I wasn't going to be able to get a 600gb SSD, which my current drive is full and I need to find some alternatives.
 
michael.pa2 said:
I don't see SSD's coming down close to the price of mechanical drives for quite some time. And though they are faster,I'm wary of their reliability at this point.
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Seriously? SSDs have no moving parts. That alone makes them far more durable than HDDs for laptop use. SSD reliability has now improved to the point that they are probably more reliable than HDDs. Welcome to the 2010s.

There's another consideration: HDDs consume three times as much power as SSDs do. That may not matter on desktops but it certainly does on laptops.

Also, HDDs weigh ten times as much as SSDs. Again, for laptops, that matters.
 
yes, some some will use more than 250, and it is all media for the most part, which in turn means maybe they need a backup, to store all that data one before the drive goes pooof!

I am sure however if you gave the avg joe blow and SSD to try over a mechanical they would want the SSD for sure and get a USB ext or something for more storage, speed, less heat, longer battery, no vibration from the 7200 RPM drives..
 
^ Good article, thanks for sharing.
I wonder if that isn't what happened to an Agility 3 that I once had.

Did about four or five hard shut downs while troubleshooting some other things and the SSD was toast.
The motherboard would see it, but wouldn't register it as a valid drive, as though it was present but had no storage, which is akin to what happened to the SSDs in the article.

Good information to know, definitely worth the read.
 
I actually wanted to pick up a 2.5 7200rpm. too bad they were all stupidly expensive compared to 3.5s GB/price.
 
Why a 7200 rpm drive and not 5900 some of you say? Because clearly NO ONE could possibly need both shouted and storage right? Seriously I wonder what world some of you live in sometimes. My work laptop runs dual 750gb 7200 rpm hds, in a mirror because just my work stuff takes up 600gb, and with the drives being encrypted we need the performance. Putting a 5900 rpm drive in just makes it damn unusable and ssds are to expensive.
 
More and more things are becoming web-based and the need to have space on the local drive isn't as important. This makes smaller SSD's alot more practical in various situations (especially laptops). Speed, power requirements, heat buildup, and even durability are certainly on the list of priorities here (especially since SSD costs are coming down).

I don't really want to see 7200 drives go away but I try to avoid Seagate anyway. For desktop and server builds, I'm thinking a 250 SSD would be good for a boot drive with internal 7200 drives for local data storage (depending on the users' needs/desires) or something similar.

It's getting to that point though where I don't really understand why Apple and MS don't start looking at selling their OS's already installed/embedded on SSD's and just do away with optical disks and images all together. They worry so much about piracy; this would go along way to keeping things locked down. In the end though, what we're witnessing is a series of steps at creating machines for people to use that are just terminals for gaining access to things.
 
seriously ... stop. When you 2nd guess what "others" need and don't need it just pisses us all off.

Walk into your favorite store. They are in business because they have mastered the less for more model.

Same thing here. Less for more puts more money into their pockets. They do it with services, goods, you name it.

The past Fall, my GF and I spent a few months looking for the right laptop for her sister as a HS grad gift so she had something worthy of college / reward for her 4.0 gpa. Speed, warranty, display and massive storage was needed to last her until she got her masters. She just made deans list btw. She has already more than 1/2 way filled up her 750GB drive on that machine. One, she loves Sims 3 and in her very limited free time plays Sims 3 and all the add-ons which she has and which take up over 50GB I think. Her music, school projects, family photo's, movies, etc. It's at the point I've told her to keep an eye on her space.

So, what was that again, she doesn't need what?

Exactly
 
SixFootDuo said:
seriously ... stop. When you 2nd guess what "others" need and don't need it just pisses us all off.

Walk into your favorite store. They are in business because they have mastered the less for more model.

Same thing here. Less for more puts more money into their pockets. They do it with services, goods, you name it.

The past Fall, my GF and I spent a few months looking for the right laptop for her sister as a HS grad gift so she had something worthy of college / reward for her 4.0 gpa. Speed, warranty, display and massive storage was needed to last her until she got her masters. She just made deans list btw. She has already more than 1/2 way filled up her 750GB drive on that machine. One, she loves Sims 3 and in her very limited free time plays Sims 3 and all the add-ons which she has and which take up over 50GB I think. Her music, school projects, family photo's, movies, etc. It's at the point I've told her to keep an eye on her space.

So, what was that again, she doesn't need what?

Exactly
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What? A young lady in school doing all that and it's not all kept in the cloud, on Facebook, or remoted in through a server at your house? I'm shocked!

Congrats btw :)
 
SixFootDuo said:
seriously ... stop. When you 2nd guess what "others" need and don't need it just pisses us all off.

Walk into your favorite store. They are in business because they have mastered the less for more model.

Same thing here. Less for more puts more money into their pockets. They do it with services, goods, you name it.

The past Fall, my GF and I spent a few months looking for the right laptop for her sister as a HS grad gift so she had something worthy of college / reward for her 4.0 gpa. Speed, warranty, display and massive storage was needed to last her until she got her masters. She just made deans list btw. She has already more than 1/2 way filled up her 750GB drive on that machine. One, she loves Sims 3 and in her very limited free time plays Sims 3 and all the add-ons which she has and which take up over 50GB I think. Her music, school projects, family photo's, movies, etc. It's at the point I've told her to keep an eye on her space.

So, what was that again, she doesn't need what?

Exactly
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Get her to back up that stuff stat. The horror is she lost any of it through a crash.
 
I backed up her Sims 3 install for her and its on an old 2.5 100GB 7200 drive. We have all the music and family photos backed up.

Trust me, these clowns will have more than enough 2.5 hard-drives to go around but because of their little announcement they can now legally loop-hole higher prices down the road.
 
SixFootDuo said:
Her music, school projects, family photo's, movies, etc. It's at the point I've told her to keep an eye on her space.

So, what was that again, she doesn't need what?
Click to expand...

That sounds less like a "need" and more like "compulsive hoarding."
 
MrGuvernment said:
Why would office laptops need 750G harddrives is my question....

everything should be stored locally in the office for security and backup...especially if the laptops leave the office grounds, and people should be remoting into work
Click to expand...

These laptops are for people who travel and demo or install the company software.
They make heavy use of multiple VM's, as the software integrates with a number of other vendors products.

I even provide them with an additional external drive for backup and additional VM images.
 
damicatz said:
Laptop drives in general, however, are slow, because of Imaginary Property Patents that make it illegal to have an option to disable acoustic management. As such, none of them have an acceptable seek time.
Click to expand...
Yes. 2.5" HDs are slow due to conspiracy.
 
necrosis said:
How much is a 500GB/1TB SSD compared to the same size in a 7200 RPM platter?

Yeah, thought so. Really dumb move Seagate. While the time will come it is not here yet. Doubt it will be here by the end of the year either.
Click to expand...

I recently had to change up my laptop...I was using a whopping 100GB and I use it for quite a bit. I would rather have the all the time speed and use a network/external for bigger file storage, and I think the vast majority of users fall into a similar category as I do.
 
SuperSubZero said:
http://www.infoworld.com/t/solid-st...isk-massive-data-loss-researchers-warn-213715
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Any data center that is concerned about power failure won't have to worry about SSDs as they have dual PSUs each connected to a UPS. BTW my SSD is equipped to handle such a case of power failure as it has a tiny power backup built right into the SSD, with just enough power to finish the writes so as to elevate the risk of data corruption (Intel 320).

Failure rates in datacenter SSDs, posted July 29, 2011:http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-reliability-failure-rate,2923.html It is a good read and actually gives you a good idea about reliability over time, albeit only a year or two.
 
damicatz said:
Laptop drives in general, however, are slow, because of Imaginary Property Patents that make it illegal to have an option to disable acoustic management. As such, none of them have an acceptable seek time.
Click to expand...
lol, I missed this gem. Most manufacturers have utilities available to adjust acoustic management. There are a number of reasons that drives are shipped with certain settings set, but IP has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Seek time is bad because it's mechanical.
 
i only use a ssd as a boot drive for win7 /
all my games are on a rapter drive . :p
 
I wish spindle drive manufacturers would pull their heads out of their asses and transition all 2.5" drives to 7,200 and 10,000 rpm...I highly doubt the manufacturing cost difference between a <7200 rpm drive and a >=7200 rpm drive is anything but minimal or zero. They'd sell more and we'd also see SSD prices fall since the demand would shift off of the SSD for those that are shopping on a constrained budget to get the most size for the dollar.
 
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