RSSSeagate Debuts Perpendicular Drives
By Ed Oswald | Published April 18, 2006, 2:53 PM
Seagate on Tuesday announced its first 3.5-inch hard disk drives to use perpendicular storage technology. The new offerings join the company's preexisting line of Cheetah drives that sport some of the fastest data transfer rates of any hard disk available.
The drives will sport data transfer rates of 73 to 125 mbps, 30 percent faster than their predecessor. Capacities of 73GB, 147GB and 300GB would be available on one, two, and four platters, respectively. Seagate is betting on perpendicular technology as a way to fit more disk capacity into a standard-sized drive.
Today's hard drives store data lengthwise across the hard-disk platter. However, with storage demands increasing, that method is meeting its limitations.
Hard disk makers say that the laws of physics will soon prevent bits of data from being stored any closer together, meaning standard drives will hit a ceiling in terms of storage capacity before their size must be increased.
In comparison, perpendicular recording drives store data like their name implies -- perpendicular to the disk platter. This method provides two benefits, say supporters. First, data is able to be stacked closer together, allowing for higer capacity. Second, data is more easily accessible, thus allowing drives with faster data transfer rates.
The Cheetah drives would be the second line of perpendicular drives from the company. Seagate began shipping its Momentus 2.5-inch drives last month in sizes ranging from 30GB to 160GB. A 1-inch drive with perpendicular recording was also introduced at 3GSM in February.
Old technology rehashed !
http://www.colossalstorage.net/colossal4a.htm
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I don't claim to know why, but I'm going to take a shot that it MAY be simply marketing...
WTF am I talking about?
It's pretty much the same for any new technology....why release a 600gb drive when you can get more money per megabyte working up in steps? God knows if a 600gb drive is released SOMEONE will buy it....even at say, 500 bux? BUT you risk alienating all the people that can't afford it at that price or who will simply not stand for that price. So you'll end up getting a number like 4 of 50 people buying it.
The idea would instead be to squeeze the dollar out of smaller sizes first. Sell the 73gb for 150, the 147 for 200, the 300 for 250/300, etc.
Get as much as you can out of those sizes for a few months, till sales kind of dip or there's some kind of lull in sales (but more realistically, whenever the hell they feel like it), then release the 400 and 600 and 1tb - reduce the prices of the bigger ones by 50 dollars or more, so then sell the 400 for 200 and the 600 for maybe 300/400 - more people will buy because it will look like a great value. Something like "whoa! I just got a 300gb perp drive 6 months ago for 200 bux and look, a 400 perp is just $200 now on sale from Best Buy/Newegg/etc. etc. Gotta get it!"
Now again, I'm not saying this IS why? But I think it's a good possibility. And I'm basing this on how I see hard drives being released currently....if you think about it, you have to realize that they have to have had 300, 400 and 500gb drives way before they were released into mainstream - just from the way prices fall on them, you can see that. It'll prolly be the same thing with these drives.
I can't wait to get mine!
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Neoprimal, I have to say you make a good argument there....
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I don't get it. Why not debut a 1-5Tb drive using Vista?
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Ceiling, what are they talking about? Let's go back to the 12" platters? Fit a good eight or nine of those together, it would be as big as a laptop, but I bet you could fit a couple a petabytes on that!
That'd be cool, you could fit every song ever produced on a single drive.
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12" platters!?
Can you imagine the seek time that kind of drive would have? Yikes.
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that'd be like looking for a song in an old LP
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Not if there were multiple read heads.
And if any disk company makes a multiple read head drive I'm suing here ass' off, that's my idea. I want my royalty checks every month.
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Here children-- Hitachi explains it-- babies: http://www.hitachigst.co...endicularAnimation.html
older:
http://www.hitachigst.co...ding_head/pr/index.html
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Awsome new technology, i hope to see 1TB drives by the end of the year that perform at least 50% faster than current drives. as long as they're not "raptor" priced. :)
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so why not introduce a 600 gb drive already ??
(i'd figure 1tb is asking for too much being that this technology is so new)
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My thoughts EXACTLY. I can buy 300 GB drives all day long for 80 to 120 bucks. I will not run out to buy a 300GB perpendicular seagate drive for $300 just cause it is NEW. Give me more than I can buy today, 600GB, 800 GB, 1 TB. Give us incentive to buy it. Unless the new technology makes 300 GB available for say $20.00!
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Yeah, why not introduce warp drive while we are at it. Yeah, lets not stop there, lets do time travel, how about invent the teleporter..
Just because we can conceive of the idea, doesn't mean its possible to do.
Hollywood isn't the same as real life, quit living in the fantasy world, get real.
If 600 gig were possible, you would see it. Did you read the article? They can't offer more space in the same area, until the drives get physical larger, that would mean the standard would have to change.
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do you even know how this technology works ??
perpendicular means MORE data in the same space ....
so why not grab an existing 500GB arange it to be perpendicular and shove 600-700gb on it ....
lay flat 6 quarters in your hand and you'll have trouble holding them ...
now stack them up and pile them in the middle ....
ohh !! whats that .... they fit better ???
why not stack more than 6 ??
do you need a bigger hand ??
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Do you know how an article works? Read it. It will explain it. 500 GB, maybe its just not possible, did you ever think of that? Maybe it SOUNDS good, but maybe its not possible.
Maybe you should work for Seagate or Western Digital, because evidently you know more than they do.
There must be a REASON they don't have 600 gig drives. I don't know why, I am just reading the article.
Sure, 400 gig drives exist, so they can double it to 800 gig. Sound good? Well maybe they haven't figured out how to make a perpendicular drive CAPABLE of 800 gig, yet.
READ the article. Hell, this is a new announcement. Maybe you people don't need 6 or 7 or 8 hundred gig, that's just totally rediculous. Maybe you should try deleting some stuff... maybe you don't need all that crap.
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Reason is probably more economical than anything. You can do or get almost anything... if you have the money. But most people don't, so that's why you don't see it.
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ahHAhahHA ..... yikes ....
dont ever let any big company hear you say that ....
one comment about deleting part of their costumer database, e-commerce, or web servers and you'd be out the door in the spot ...
maybe, just maybe it would be more efficient to have .... 4tb of storage with heat generated by only 4 drives than to have 16 250gb drives ...
oh... dont forget powering 4 drives is ALSO cheaper,.... not to mention maintenance such as uptime and raid failures ....
maybe you dont need high capacity drives because deleting a couple of your porn movies would free up a good couple of gigs ...
ahAHhahHAhah you funny FUNNY man
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Ever think that they want to make money????
WHOLLY CRAP!!!!!
Its marketing you idiots!
If they give you what you want now, then they dont have anything to offer later. The article gives you dumba**es what you want. More space in the same drive. "A 1-inch drive with perpendicular recording was also introduced at 3GSM in February." Phuknuts!!!!!!
So now you can hold all your porn and dumb ringtones on your stupid cell phone.
For the idiot who wants 4 hdds instead of 16 to store company s***.... DVD BACKUP!!!!! and if one goes down you lost 25% of your data where if you had 16 and you lost one you now have 93.75% of your data not 75%.
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ahHAhahHA you sad monkey ....
you have no idea what you're even talking about .... ever heard of "raid1+0", "raid 5"......
when a drive goes down NO data is lost ...
...... deee-teee-deeee !!!
dvd-backup AHhahAHhah
how am i supposed to access(READ/WRITE) a database from a "read-only" source ..... PFFFFFFFFFF
go back to reading your pc-mag articles you patethic 3rd-world-country computer user
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Considering I'm pushing 500GB now and staring directly in the face of running out of space, I disagree.
:)
And that's just my data array. (App Installs/Movies/TV Shows/etc..)
Of course, were this not a home entertainment server, the need for all that space would decrease considerably, but with how cheap networked storage is nowadays, it hardly matters.
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When it's economically feasible, they will.
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I have a Maxtor external 3.5 inch drive which uses the "old" parallel technology. It has a capacity of 500 gigs.
600 gigs certainly is possible. However, the price would be insane. That's probably a more likely explanation for why they don't have them yet.
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'zakly
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I'm confused as to what is "wholly crap."
...and are you sure it's not just partially crap?
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Ever heard of controller failure? Or electrical damage to HDDs? Or simple data corruption? Theft? Fire? RAID 1 and 5 are not the be-all, end-all answer to data integrity. A proper backup regime will include multiple backup technologies - DVDRW, hot-swap HDDs & network backup are my preferred methods. Off-site storage is critical to anyone who is serious about keeping their data - RAID 1 & 5 don't offer this alone.
Truth be told, drive failure is the least of your worries. It is rare that data is lost in a simple drive failure, in my experience. User error is the greatest threat, followed by malware/trojans/virii/etc. :P
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HAHA .... I love a good b**** slap !.
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