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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday January 29 2017, @10:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the that's-a-lot-of-pron dept.

Seagate claims that it has had 12 terabyte hard disk drives "in the field" for "several quarters", and that 14 TB and 16 TB drives are coming soon. The company has a goal of producing 20 TB hard drives by 2020:

The enterprise is also moving en masse to speedy SSDs for high-performance workloads, which recently led the company to halt further development of 15K HDDs. Many analysts opine that 10K HDDs are next on the chopping block. In response, Seagate shifted its production might to more lucrative high-capacity enterprise HDDs, which now account for 37% of its revenue, to leverage the shrinking HDD price-per-GB advantage over SSDs. Seagate recently closed its Suzhou, China manufacturing plant to reduce manufacturing costs, but it simultaneously increased its investments in other facilities to address the challenges of moving from six platters per drive to eight. The net effects of its maneuverings total $300 million in savings per year.

Seagate is essentially retreating into the high-capacity segment, and the company announced that its new 12TB HDDs have already been shipping to key customers for several quarters. Seagate CEO Steve Luczoalso noted that the company would offer 16TB drives within the next 12 to 18 months. Seagate's new high-capacity offerings are destined for data centers, NAS, DVRs, and a booming surveillance market.

Also at Ars Technica and The Verge.

Previously: Western Digital Announces 12-14 TB Hard Drives and an 8 TB SSD


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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday January 29 2017, @07:08PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday January 29 2017, @07:08PM (#460355) Journal

    6 and 8 TB started off as enterprise-only capacities with prices around $600 or more, but 8 TB consumer HDDs can now be found for less than $200 [slickdeals.net] (deals regularly hitting $170, and the possibility of $150), just over $0.02 per GB. 5 TB is around $100-110, a sweet spot for consumer drives.

    Obviously there is going to be a delay before consumers can get their hands on high capacity drives, but the consumer HDD is not dead just yet. Consumers can even get their hands on helium-filled drives [soylentnews.org], which were previously only found in enterprise drives.

    Most consumers will be fine with a lower amount of NAND, but for those that simply want capacity/$, HDDs are still superior. That could change in 5 years once companies are slinging SSDs with tens of terabytes of QLC 3D NAND, but there is still a place for hard drives.

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