Seagate Plans 37.5TB HDD Within Matter of Years

Ralph_19 writes "Wired visited Seagate's R&D labs and learned we can expect 3.5-inch 300-terabit hard drives within a matter of years. Currently Seagate is using perpendicular recording but in the next decade we can expect heat-assisted magnetic recording (HARM), which will boost storage densities to as much as 50 terabits per square inch. The technology allows a smaller number of grains to be used for each bit of data, taking advantage of high-stability magnetic compounds such as iron platinum." In the meantime, Hitachi is shipping a 1 TB HDD sometime this year. It is expected to retail for $399.

Re:That's great.

[ImdatS]

Just quickly, the specs I found for the Hitachi Drive:

- 5 discs, two heads each, rotating at 7200 RPM
- 1070Mbps transfer rate
- 8,7ms avg seek time
- 4,17ms avg latency
- around 9 watts power consumption while in "inactive-mode" (NOT reading or writing)

Hope this helps

Unit of measure

[sphealey]

If this is to be a tera_BIT_ drive then I believe the headline should read "Tb" rather than "TB".

sPh

Re:37.5TB HDD

[Zenaku]

How does the capacity of a drive have anything to do with its seek time? Seek time is a function of how quickly the read arm can cross the radius of the platter, and to a smaller degree how fast the platter spins. The article claims they will be increasing storage density using this HARM thing so that more bits can be stored on the same amount of surface area. Seek time should not change significantly unless they make the platters larger, or spin the drive at lower RPM.

Re:Unit of measure

[Cctoide]

37.5TB = 300Tb. TB is a "rounder" unit and as such is more suitable to a headline, although it's still a bit confusing.

Re:product looking for a market

[Zenaku]

It's still a major issue for me. You're right, I'm not an average joe when it comes to storage needs, but does that mean that nobody should produce a product that fills my need? My 1.2 Terabyte RAID array is full, and I am currently wondering how the hell to add more storage and migrate the data without simply building a whole new machine.

The innovation in capacity and density is driven by the needs of enterprise users, and atypical users like me. The advances that come of it are then incorporated into lower-end drives as well. The reason that you start to see 100GB drives being the lowest capacity you can find is not because nobody could get by on less, it is because it would cost more to keep producing drives using the older technology -- each leap forward in drive technology has to be accompanied by retooling of manufacturing equipment and process, and it doesn't make a lot of fiscal sense to keep producing lower capacity drives if they cost as much or more to make as a newer one with higher capacity.

Re:Terabits???

[Anonymous Coward]

actually they are. according to IEC 60027-2 [wikipedia.org]
1 kilobyte (kB) = 1000 bytes
1 kibibyte (kiB) = 1024 bytes

come on, the original specs date back from 1999.

Re:That's great.

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm...
At the risk of sounding sarcastic (I know that never happens around here)

I'm pretty sure there are 8 bits in an octect (which for all intensive purposes is a Byte)

Re:ANOTHER LIE

[Soul-Burn666]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix [wikipedia.org]

Kilobyte = 1000 bytes
Megabyte = 1000 kilobytes
Gigabyte = 1000 megabytes
Terabyte = 1000 gigabytes
Kibibyte = 1024 bytes
Mebibyte = 1024 kibibytes
Gibibyte = 1024 mebibytes
Tebibyte = 1024 gibibytes

Re:ANOTHER LIE

[benzapp]

Is a kilometer 1024 meters?
Is a kilogram 1024 grams?

It is the software makers who do not understand these historic terms. Fight the redefining of words!

Re:Terabits???

[qazsedcft]

It's the OS manufacturers that need to get up to speed. The definition of GB is 1,000,000,000 bytes. You're thinking of GiB. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix [wikipedia.org]

Re:Some more specs

[cdrudge]

As for noise: does anyone have an idea of how loud is 2.9-3.2 bels (typical) ?

1 Bel = 10 dB. 30 dB is about the same as a quiet whisper, leaves rustling, or a typical library.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Backup Solution?

[Anonymous Coward]

Separate partitions can isolate logic errors though, which are the most common cause of data corruption.

300 teraBIT, 37.5 teraBYTE.

[freeweed]

FYI, 300 / 8 = 37.5

Sweet jesus, do you people not even read the summary anymore??

Re:Funny you mention that.

[clydemaxwell]

Who the hell modded you up? You have obviously never been involved in a large-scale backup solution.
Disks DIE. Tapes rarely do (comparatively). Tapes, although slow and linear, are incredibly durable.

HDDs aren't exactly volatile, but they are a heck of a lot more susceptible to corruption and failure due to the fact that you have both a magnetic storage medium AND the circuitry to power and control it on one device. And if one dies, you're pretty much fucked. A tape is only one of these, and is simpler and more reliable.

So why do we do things the old-fashioned way? Because it FSCKING WORKS!!

Re:Terabits???

[AikonMGB]

8 b = 1 B, therefore 8 Tb = 1 TB (or 1 Tb = 1/8 Tb if you prefer)

Less confusing? You just stated that 1Tb = (1/8)Tb..

Aikon-

Re:Terabits???

[kkwst2]

It's not much worse that what you stated, which could be interpreted as a byte is one eighth of a bit.

I understood what you were trying to say, but it wasn't clear. Try:

300 Tb * (1 TB /8 Tb) = 37.5 TB.

or to generalize:
x Tb * (1TB / 8 Tb) = x/8 TB.

Simple mistake (or abmiguous notation, if you prefer), but kind of funny since you were ribbing the parent about simple math!

Oh really? Seagate warrantee is 5 yrs! Rest are 2!

[ClioCJS]

So you would voluntarily purchase a harddrive from a company that only has 2-year warrantee, versus one that has a 5-year warrantee?

Me, I'd rather have the 5-year warrantee. All data should be backed up. If your drive fails, buying a new one sucks. 500G * 5 years = 2.5T/yrs. 500G * 2 years = 1T/yrs. I'd rather get 2.5 times my storage-over-time. Especially after all the WD drives that crashed. (My last harddrive purchases, in reverse chrono order, by gigabytes: Seagates:750,500,500,400,300,250,200, WDs:120,120,120,120,80,80,80,60,40,25,17,4). Out of all of those, WDs have generally not lasted as long (crashed: 4g, 60g, 80g, 120g), and the warrantee has been the deciding factor of whether I need to spend ~$300 for a new drive or not.