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from the now-you-CAN-take-it-with-you? dept.
Seagate has launched the world's first 5 TB 2.5" hard disk drives (HDDs). However, they won't fit in most laptops:
The new Seagate BarraCuda 2.5" drives resemble the company's Mobile HDDs introduced earlier this year and use a similar set of technologies: motors with 5400 RPM spindle speed, platters based on [shingled magnetic recording (SMR)] technology with over 1300 Gb/in2 areal density, and multi-tier caching. The 3 TB, 4 TB and 5 TB BarraCuda 2.5" HDDs that come with a 15 mm z-height are designed for external storage solutions because virtually no laptop can accommodate drives of that thickness. Meanwhile, the 7 mm z-height drives (500 GB, 1 TB and 2 TB) are aimed at mainstream laptops and SFF desktops that need a lot of storage space.
Seagate has also launched a 2 TB shingled solid-state hybrid drive (SSHD) with 8 GB of NAND cache and a 128 MB DRAM cache buffer. The 1 TB and 500 GB versions also have 8 GB of NAND and 128 MB of DRAM. These are the first hybrid drives to use shingled magnetic recording.
Seagate press release (for "mobile warriors" only).
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Wednesday October 26 2016, @05:43PM
Yes, I know, I have worked with them. stacks of hundreds upon hundreds of drives per storage unit. A lot of places I know (and have worked at) have been moving away from 2.5 to 3.5 for storage. Back in the day, the smaller size of the 2.5 resulted in lower latency when seeking, and being able to pack more spindles in a machine, which would improve IOPS.
However now that we have SSDs taking care of the IOP intensive tasks, the increased mechanical failures, the increased heat generated, the increased power requirements per GB and the increased DC engineer time in replacing more disks per GB outweighed the benefits 2.5 brought.
Hence the move to fewer, larger 3.5 inch disks. I admit I have never seen disk based robotic arms, but I am sure they exist. Saying that, they have been handling tapes for decades, and those are closer to 3.5 inch disks in size than 2.5 inch, so I think they will be fine.