The Evolution of HDDs in the Near Future: Speaking with Seagate CTO, Mark Re
by Anton Shilov on July 6, 2016 2:00 PM EST
In the recent months, Seagate has made several significant announcements regarding the future of HDD technology and unveiled a number of important products. In particular, late last year the company has said that hard disk drives would continue to evolve in the following 20 years, implying that Seagate is exploring multiple technologies to improve capacities and performance of HDDs. Additionally, Seagate introduced the first shingled magnetic recording (SMR) based consumer drives for mobile PCs, which marks a significant milestone in the development of the technology.
The Evolution Continues, New Challenges Arise
While solid-state storage devices are evolving fast in terms of performance and getting more affordable every year, they are not going to match hard drives in terms of cost-per-GB anytime soon. Still, with economic feasibility in place, HDDs are poised to keep evolving with larger capacities and better performance. Throughout the history of hard drives, the evolution of HDDs has involved multiple factors, including materials (platters), mechanics (motors, arm movers, internal structure, and so on), read/record heads, controllers and firmware.
The keys to additional capacity and performance of HDDs have remained generally the same over the years: small pitches and narrow tracks as well as a high rotating speed respectively. The evolution of HDDs in the future will rely on platter density and new heads, as well as the compute capabilities of their controllers. The performance of HDD controllers in the coming years will matter more than ever.
For our coverage, we approached Seagate and spoke with Mark Re, SVP and Chief Technology Officer of Seagate, to discuss their plans to announce HDDs featuring other important technologies. Rather than a question/answer discussion, what follows is a culmination and expansion of topics discussed.
Sources and Recommended Reading:
Seagate: Hard Disk Drives Set to Stay Relevant for 20 Years
Hard Disk Drives with HAMR Technology Set to Arrive in 2018
Market Views: HDD Shipments Down 20% in Q1 2016, Hit Multi-Year Low
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JoeyJoJo123 - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
It's ogre. HDDs are dead. SSDs won.Just give up.
pancakes - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
Not until SSD's offer the same or better capacity/$. SSD's don't make sense for archival data or large amounts of data that does not need to be accessed at higher speeds.ShieTar - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
Well, HDDs barely make sense for archival data either, you still can get tapes at less than a fifth of HDD prices for the same capacity.On the other hand, I think SSD builders do keep an ace in the hole by currently not offering 3.5" SSDs. As soon as the prices for NAND-Chips drop into the right region, they do have the chance to drop the $/GB ratio quickly by just adding a significantly higher number of NAND-Chips to a single controller and DDR-Cache.
HDDs won't vanish within the year, to be sure, but I would somewhat agree to Mr. Ogre in saying that the HDD will be running out of usefullness in the near future.
mkozakewich - Thursday, July 7, 2016 - link
If we get multiple terabytes per square inch, I wonder if tapes can even keep up. Surely some of these advancements (like shingles) can be brought over to tape, too.cm2187 - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
Plus I think you can kiss goodbye your data if you leave an SSD 2 years unpoweredMorawka - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
SSD's under the endurance rating typically last over 10 years. There is even a article here on anandtech about it.tabascosauz - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
SSD data retention != SSD endurance. There is even an article here on Ananadtech about it, go read it.tabascosauz - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
Whoops, didn't read lol. Still, even if SSDs are no problem for client applications, no level headed commercial application requiring long term data retention will choose solid state storage.patrickjp93 - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
Sorry but BS, especially with respect to rebuilding arrays. And with 3DXPoint, solid state data retention will extend to 5x the length the very best magnetic platter is capable of.slyphnier - Friday, July 8, 2016 - link
saying a post BS while you saying BS ?3DXPoint is still new, it have yet to prove it really give 5x better data retention... if already proved then share some legit data.
Although it not much cases that a drive need to be stored offline for longtime AFAIK there still none NAND on consumer grade that have data retention as long as magnetic platter.