Seagate to release 5TB and 6TB enterprise HDDs in 2014

Abula

Abula

[H]ard|Gawd
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Damn 6tb next year....

Seagate to release 5TB and 6TB enterprise HDDs in 2014

A roadmap from Seagate shows that the company expects to ship 6 TB enterprise HDDs by the second half of 2014. The HDD manufacturer will ship the 6 TB drives in the 3.5″ formfactor. These 6 TB HDDs are part of Seagate’s Enterprise Capacity series. Drives that are part of this series are targeted for bulk storage where price and reliability is important and performance is less essential.
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That huge picture you linked is not showing. The domain doesn't allow hotlinking.
 
Since some questions were asked above, both the 5 and 6TB drives will be in a standard SFF-8301 1" high form factor. The initial drives will be based on a technology called shingled magnetic recording (SMR). The ES series 6TB drives will be 5 platter (as of now, could still be 4 based on manufacturing yields) and the CS series 5TB drives will be 4 platter. Because of the tech switch, expect the consumer models to trail the enterprise by approximately 6 months. HAMR drives with 1.25-1.5 times these capacities will follow in Q414 or Q115, and as with the SMR drives expect the enterprise drives to launch first.
 
Wow...just wow. I hadn't paid attention to mechanical drives in a while. This is amazing.

SSDs simply aren't going to come anywhere close to comparing with mechanical drives in $-per-capacity, especially with HDDs moving the goalposts like this.

Sort of want one...just because!
 
We are quickly approaching HAMR TIME! :D


I can't believe I'll live to see the day we reach 10TB HDD's. Still amazed at how far they've come in the past 20 years and how much further they plan on taking current spinning rust. Flash is facing its own limitations as it gets closer to 10nm with no 3D Stacking or replacement technology to boot.
 
It's quite astonishing how the mechanical HDD makers keep raising the value proposition.

I mean holy pete, who ever thought storage would come so cheaply? In the last 10 years, we've seen around a 100-fold increase in hard drive capacity, without anything close to a 100-fold increase in price.

Mechanical HDD tech is not going away soon.
 
Objekt said:
It's quite astonishing how the mechanical HDD makers keep raising the value proposition.

I mean holy pete, who ever thought storage would come so cheaply? In the last 10 years, we've seen around a 100-fold increase in hard drive capacity, without anything close to a 100-fold increase in price.
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As long as they can keep increasing the aerial density without significantly increasing the price and drastically reducing the reliability they can continue to increase the value.

Mechanical HDD tech is not going away soon.
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I highly doubt that SSDs based on flash memory will ever catch up.
 
Certainly. There is a lot of value in a well-understood, mature, and reliable technology - and the evolution of same.

Are read/write rates going to increase? Seems like a logical consequence of increasing areal data density. Same rotation speed + around double data density = faster data reads. But it could be I'm missing something, or the gain will be relatively small.
 
around double data density
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Aren't these going to be 1.2 TB per platter for the 6TB 5 platter model and 1.25 TB / platter for the 4 disk 5TB model instead of the 1TB platters they currently use.
 
You're right, guess it's not that much of an increase.

Evolutionary, not revolutionary.
 
Although it may be a larger leap in the enterprise. I mean what size platters are they currently using in Constellation drives?
 
drescherjm said:
I highly doubt that SSDs based on flash memory will ever catch up.
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catch up to what? the value? how are you defining value? you can get a 2TB SSD from STEC today if you have the $9K to spend.

the value is you have large ultra fast capacity.

in terms of large inexpensive storage ... yeah it will be awhile and probably be a different tech than flash memory before solid state completely takes over.
 
catch up to what?
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In terms of inexpensive storage such that hard drives will no longer be needed.

in terms of large inexpensive storage ... yeah it will be awhile and probably be a different tech than flash memory before solid state completely takes over.
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That is what I was getting at.
 
madrebel said:
catch up to what? the value? how are you defining value? you can get a 2TB SSD from STEC today if you have the $9K to spend.

the value is you have large ultra fast capacity.

in terms of large inexpensive storage ... yeah it will be awhile and probably be a different tech than flash memory before solid state completely takes over.
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The key phrase was "based on flash memory". ReRAM will replace NAND like LCD monitors replaced CRT monitors. HP has only refrained from releasing ReRAM SSDs to the market this year to allow the NAND makers, like Hynix, time to make the transition without going bankrupt.
 
last time i talked to a hynix guy, couple months back now, there were still a few technical niggles to be resolved.

REALLY looking forward to 12gbs SAS ReRAM SSDs though. like, a LOT.
 
You do know what NDA stands for, right?

Nonetheless, I am more interested in their latest-and-greatest consumer drives.
 
Man im looking forward to these, but i need a newer NAS than my old synology 210j.
 
Seagate and the other two hard disk manufacturers (Western Digital and...?) are threatened by SSDs. There are 1 TB SSDs now.

For several years there have been 5-6 TB disks ready for production but they chose not to produce them. Because they dont have to. It is a oligopoly right now, these three own the market and they are happy staying with 2TB disks. Before the Thailand floodings, there where four vendors, and there was a fierce competition and prices dropped rapidly and storage capacity increased rapidly. After they bought the fourth vendor, there is now a oligopoly and the competition is gone. Which punishes us customers. We should have seen 5-6 TB disks at a very low price offered long time ago.

The HDD crisis was a fake:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/HDD-...Western-Digital-Post-Big-Profits-266676.shtml

HDD market manipulation:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Enjo...-Posts-Huge-Profits-Again-Part-1-283193.shtml

Only when SSDs are threatening HDDs, we will see some advancements. Until then, these three vendors will happily milk us for money. They dont want to build large factories to build 5-6TB disks, why would they? Such factories are very expensive. They would like us to stay at 2TB forever. Luckily we have SSDs now. Without them, there would be no option and they would stay at 2TB forever.

The government should look at this oligopoly. It is exactly that. Before, prices fell sharply, now prices stay almost still. And the vendors post huge profits, more than ever - read my links.
 
shollz said:
I wonder what these suckers will weigh?
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I expect no different than 4 platter 4TB drives of today,

Edit: When I think of this. The 6TB will probably be a 5 platter drive not 4 platters.
 
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While I do look forward to the day of having no spinners, I'm quite pleased to see the technology continue to advance until that becomes a viable choice. I'd love a 5 or 6 TB drive to replace the two 500 GB I have had for a while now (the one is nearing 8 years old).
 
brutalizer said:
For several years there have been 5-6 TB disks ready for production but they chose not to produce them. Because they dont have to. It is a oligopoly right now, these three own the market and they are happy staying with 2TB disks. Before the Thailand floodings, there where four vendors, and there was a fierce competition and prices dropped rapidly and storage capacity increased rapidly. After they bought the fourth vendor, there is now a oligopoly and the competition is gone. Which punishes us customers. We should have seen 5-6 TB disks at a very low price offered long time ago.
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Yeah, 2 & 3 TB drives have been the maximum for FAR too long. It really pisses me off. Sure, they finally gave us 4TB drives, but they're charging too much for them, and the 2TB prices haven't dropped for years.

But hey, they can keep forcing us to buy 2-3TB drives and pocket the profits... so why not?
I sure would like 4 of those 6TB drives though....

No doubt they will sell them for $400 though; the sales pitch will be that you save money by needing fewer servers for the same capacity.

The 6TB drives should be here already for <$200. 3TB drives should be <$100, and 1TB drives should be discontinued.
 
Awesome. With drives this big raid 10 seems less wasteful, and better than raid 5. Who cares if I'm losing 50% of space when the drives are 6TB each! A raid 10 with 4 would be 12TB Well it would probably be more like 9TB actual space but still awesome.

Though if the thickness increases then that will screw up most mass storage situations...
 
i would be more concerned with losing the second drive during the rebuild than the 50% wasted space.
 
Yeah rebuild times would probably be a little crazy lol. Even with my array of 9 1TB drives a raid 5 rebuild takes several hours, always makes me nervous... I will probably convert it to raid 6 some time.
 
1TB mirrors aren't 'that' sketchy ... but still you want good backups for that stuff.
 
I'm happy with my 2 and 4 TB drives in my WHS 2011 server with Drivepool for now.
Of course, 6TB and higher TB drives will let me reduce the number of drives, reduce power consumption and heat.

I'll do it when prices become sane.
 
madrebel said:
1TB mirrors aren't 'that' sketchy ... but still you want good backups for that stuff.
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But I would never consider a RAID 5 with drives of this capacity - I'm sure the time to rebuild the array would be absurd even with 3 drives, let alone 5+.
 
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