Items tagged with Hard Drive
Western Digital announced plans to incorporate iNAND universal flash storage (UFS) embedded flash drives (EFDs) into its upcoming hard disk drives (HDDs) to enable increasingly larger capacities and improved performance, among other benefits. The name for this is OptiNAND, and it underpins Western Digital's storage roadmap up to around 50TB. That's a lot of storage space. Interestingly, this announcement comes the heels of a report that Western Digital and Noxia might combine forces to form a $20 billion NAND flash goliath. Not to be confused with a cache buffer or volatile DRAM, this is something entirely different. Western Digital also swats away any notion of this being a hybrid HDD design,...
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Consumers have never had more choices if they need to purchase storage, whether it's hard drives, flash drives, solid-state drives, or even cloud or network-attached storage. Save for a couple of blips, prices have steadily creeped downward and today you can score a 10TB hard drive for only $300, or a measly $0.03 per gigabyte. For many users, that's plenty of space -- more than enough to store their movies, photos, music, and documents. For others, though, 10TB just won't cut it. For those users, thankfully, it's almost HAMR time... With "heat-assisted magnetic recording", or HAMR, Seagate will use heat to increase density much further than they can be with traditional PMR (perpendicular...
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The need for more bulk storage isn't slowing down, and in fact continues to grow at an incredible rate. At one point, a 4TB hard drive seemed like it offered a ton of digital breathing room. Today, that's not so much the case. As we capture our photos and videos at higher resolutions (8K is right around the corner), many users will reach a point where they feel they simply can't have enough storage. And that's to say nothing of the insatiable appetite for storage in the enterprise and data center. Earlier this year, HGST blew our minds when it began shipping its first 12TB hard drive, the Ultrastar He12. Now, the WD-owned HGST division is being followed up by WD itself, with the Gold...
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At this point, it's hard to tell what the top limit for densities will be with current mechanical hard drive technologies, but HGST proves that it's not 12TB. With the company's brand-new Ultrastar He12, enterprise users can take advantage of a staggering 12,000GB capacity in a single hard disk drive, and relish in the fact that it's backed by a 5-year warranty. One of the standout features of the He12 is one that's not easy to see just by looking at it. Under the hood is are an industry-leading eight platters, with simple math telling us that each one is 1.5TB in size. The areal density on these disk is massive, and could mean that this could become one of the fastest 7,200 RPM drives ever produced....
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With a name like 'KillDisk', it's not hard to imagine what the malware it represents sets out to accomplish. Add on a good helping of ransomware, and KillDisk becomes the kind of malware that can give people nightmares, and not to mention a lot of undue stress. In the past, KillDisk malware has infected computers in the industrial sector, with the goal of rendering servers or desktops essentially unbootable. This was accomplished not only by deleting files, but renaming others. In effect, it's designed to create a very bad day for the person who has to deal with the mess. Recently, it's been discovered that KillDisk received an upgrade, adding a ransomware component. If infected, a Mr. Robot-esque...
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In a blog post announcing its 3.50 firmware update for the PlayStation 4 console, Sony highlighted several new social features that were being added, followed by a mention of supporting Remote Play on Windows PCs and Macs. However, PS4 owners are discovering several other feature additions included in the new firmware, such as what appears to be fixed support for 4TB hard drives. There's an ongoing reddit thread keeping track of the changes being reported by PS4 owners who've installed the 3.50 update, and one of the latest discoveries is that an issue related to the PS4's Rest Mode feature that previously affected HDDs larger than 2TB paired with Nyko's Power Bank has "probably" been addressed...
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Seagate is trying to make mechanical hard drives sexy again and it's doing it with a new thin and fast 2-terabyte mobile HDD for laptop applications. According to Seagate, its new drive is the planet's first and only 2TB capacity HDD offered a scant 7mm capacity, which is the same thickness as a typical solid state drive (SSD). At only 3.17 ounces, it's also light—25 percent lighter than Seagate's previous generation of mobile HDDs, the company says. More than just bragging rights, notebook manufacturers have been on a mission to offer customers increasingly thin and light designs. Seagate's new drive allows them to continue to do so, while also offering customers more capacity per dollar than...
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If you own or have owned a 3TB hard drive from Seagate, the law firm behind a suit against the company wants to hear from you. At the case page, it's mentioned that three Seagate models are involved here, including the standard desktop version (called Barracuda), the Backup Plus external version, or any other that includes the model number "ST3000DM001." The suit alleges that these 3TB Seagate drives have a failure rate that's far worse than what's advertised. "Consumers report them failing as an unprecedented rate - sometimes even days after their first use," the law firm writes. Making matters worse, it's said that after people lost data with these bunk drives, the replacement they were given...
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We learned just earlier about the release of Seagate's mammoth 8TB enterprise hard drives, and as we now see, that wasn't the only trick the company had up its sleeves today. Also announced is a brand-new mobile hard drive that packs a staggering 2TB under its 7mm hood. While 2TB mobile hard drives are not new, a drive that offers such high density into this particular thickness is. It means that those wanting the thinnest notebooks possible won't need to sacrifice overall storage. 2TB of storage in an Ultrabook is quite dreamy. Despite the drive's small size, it should also be a fairly good performer thanks to the fact that it consists of two mammoth 1TB platters - an industry first. That means...
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Seagate on Tuesday announced a new portfolio of 8TB mechanical hard disk drives (HDDs) consisting of the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD, Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD, and Seagate Kintec HDD. The new 8TB drives cover markets for small-and-medium-size businesses (SMBs) and large enterprises.Starting with the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD, this 8TB uses conventional magnetic recording and boasts a 100 percent performance increase over Seagate's previous generation offering. Seagate sees this drive as a high capacity and reliable option for cloud and traditional enterprise applications.The Seagate 8TB Enterprise NAS HDD is built to scale. It provides a third more storage density for any...
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Remember when it was considered a big deal when SSDs hit the $1/GB mark? That seems high now, but remember that some of the first SSDs to hit the market cost about $8/GB. Then, mainstream Solid State Drives crossed the $0.50/GB mark, and today, it's super easy to find SSDs on sale that cost about ~$0.35/GB. According to predictions at InformationWeek, SSD pricing could become 1:1 with mechanical hard drives in late 2016. Imagine getting a 4TB SSD for about $150 - I am salivating at the thought. If that happens, it will negate the last remaining technical advantage of the legacy hard drive - more capacity for a lot less. Soon, we could reach price parity and a point in which mechanical...
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When 4TB desktop hard drives first hit the scene, I remember being impressed that we managed to reach that point -- 4,000GB is a lot of freaking space. Of course, we now have 6TB consumer drives, so the luster of 4TB has been dulled a bit. Unless we begin talking about 4TB on a mobile drive, perhaps. That's something that has become a reality, thanks to Seagate, which is releasing two 4TB models under the Samsung HDD moniker. The Samsung P3 is designed to be sleek, while the M3 is designed to be a little more durable (and I think it looks better, too). It's hard to imagine that these slim drives have five platters under their hood, or that they can be powered using simple USB -- but both points...
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We've come a long way since the days when hard drives were measured in megabytes. Underscoring that point is the industry's first 10TB enterprise-class HDD, the host-managed Ultrastar Archive Ha10 SMR built by HGST, a division of Western Digital. HGST says the capacious HDD is intended of next-generation archive applications. The 10TB monster is a helium-based drive, the third of its kind by HGST in the past two years. HGST says it's deployed over a million helium-based HelioSeal HDDs to date and is super confident in the technology's reliability. In the task the new drive was purpose built for -- active archive duties -- HGST says the Ultrastar Archive Ha10 is the market leader in reliability...
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Since when is an external hard drive solution a decorative desk piece? Since now, apparently -- Seagate's premium owned LaCie division today unveiled the LaCie Mirror portable hard drive that comes completely encased in scratch resistant Corning Gorilla Glass. It also comes with an ebony wooden base, which might seem odd for an external drive, though this is one of those cases where it would be a shame to keep it out of sight. The LaCie Mirror is a signature piece designed in collaboration with French designer Pauline Deltour. It's also functional -- inside the Mirror sits a 1TB hard drive for backup chores. Data transfers take place over USB 3.0, provided you have a USB 3.0 port on your PC....
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Have huge storage needs and don't mind making some sacrifices to score suitable drives at a great price? If so, you'll want to turn your attention to Seagate's just-announced 'Archive HDD' series, one that offers densities of 5TB, 6TB, and 8TB. That's right - 8TB. And a $260 8TB at that. Back in 2007, Seagate was one of the first to release a hard drive based on perpendicular magnetic recording, a technology that was required to help us break past the roadblock of achieving more than 250GB per platter. Since then, PMR has evolved to allow the release of drives as large as 8TB, but to go beyond that, something new was needed. That "something new" is shingled magnetic recording. Seagate Archive...
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Western Digital this morning hit the storage industry over its head with a couple of new high capacity hard drive options being offered in the company's WD Red line of drives. One is a 5-terabyte HDD and the other is a first-to-market 6-terabyte capacity HDD based on a tightly packed five-platter design, and like all WD Red drives, they're both intended for home and small office NAS systems In addition to these new high capacity storage solutions, Western Digital announced the introduction of its WD Red Pro HDD series available in 1TB to 4TB capacities for the medium and large business NAS markets. WD's Pro level drives are compatibility tested with top NAS system manufacturers and optimized...
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Overall Seagate Technology closed out its fiscal year (ended June 27, 2014) in good shape. The drive maker reported fourth quarter revenue of $3.3 billion, which was enough to pull a healthy profit of $320 million along with diluted earnings per share of $0.95. It also generated around $577 million in operating cash flow and returned a sizable $166 million to shareholders in the form of dividends and share redemptions. For its full fiscal year 2014, Seagate returned a whopping $2.5 billion to shareholders and raised $1.8 billion in investment grade debt. What this all boils down to is that Seagate found itself on strong footing and appears to be in fantastic shape moving forward. "Throughout...
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Pictures, videos, and other forms of digital data aren't getting any smaller, and you may find that your tablet or smartphone is suddenly short on space. There are a variety of solutions available, one of them being Toshiba's new Canvio Wireless Adapter, a simple yet creatively designed gadget that adds wireless networking capabilities to any traditional external hard drive. There's no rocket science involved here -- simply connect the adapter to an external HDD and a USB power source. Once you've done that, you can proceed to share, stream and access the drive's contents wirelessly from any network-enabled device, such as your smartphone or tablet. "In today’s increasingly wireless world,...
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You may not have heard of Supertron Electronics before, but over in India, the company's name is much better known. Supertron has a longstanding relationship with Seagate which, for thirteen years, existed as an import partner and sub-distributor. In 2006, Supertron became an official Seagate National Distributor, giving Seagate an extended presence in India and local areas. Apparently some unscrupulous folks have decided to take advantage of both company's good names. According to Supertron Electronics, gray market dealers are importing fake Seagate hard drives, rebadging them as Supertron models, and then selling them inside and outside of India with seemingly favorable warranties. Seagate's...
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It sounds like a pipe dream, but for those who have followed the industry, you'll know that we've been dreaming about multi-terabyte hard drives for quite some time and capacities up to 4TB exist today. Prototypes have already made the rounds once or twice, but TDK has a new project that could enable 40TB hard drives by 2020. That's right, folks: 40TB on a single drive. At once, all of your archiving problems would be solved... until you outgrew even that, of course. Presently, HDD recording density is boosted by the use of a technology called "high magnetic coercivity," but as you could probably guess from the lack of true increases recently, that's about at its limit. TDK's approach involves...
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In a perfect world, solid state drives (SSDs) would offer the same capacity as mechanical hard drives for the same or similar price, but we don't live in a perfect world. Mechanical hard disk drives (HDDs) still offer the best bang-for-buck, and due to their large capacities, they're often desirable in the enterprise environments. So it goes with Seagate's new Terascale HDD and Enterprise Performance 10K HDD v7, a pair of drives optimized for emerging cloud infrastructures and large scale data centers. "Over the next eight years, the capacity shipped into the cloud will double and by 2020 personal and enterprise clouds will account for greater than 60 percent of the total storage capacity shipped....
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Seagate on Tuesday unveiled a new line of drives custom-built for always-on network attached storage (NAS) systems. Multiple capacities are available, including a 4TB model that's currently the industry's highest capacity available from a single NAS HDD. The new drives are intended for NAS boxes with up to five drive bays. "Today about 50 percent of NAS arrays are sold diskless meaning that customers are challenged with identifying and installing the right storage for their system. By developing a drive like NAS HDD, we’ve taken the guesswork out of it and made it easy for customers to identify the right drive for their system," said Scott Horn, Seagate vice president of marketing. "By...
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