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Seagate Pushes Hard Drive Platters to 160GB
TheRainDog writes "Although perpendicular recording has yet to make its way into desktop hard drives, Seagate continues to push platter densities the old fashioned way. The company's 160GB platters have the highest areal density in the industry by over 25%, allowing Seagate to create a 160GB Barracuda 7200.9 hard drive that uses a single platter and costs under $90. The single-platter design has lower noise levels and power consumption than multi-platter designs, and a lower probability of a catastrophic head crash. Higher areal densities also allow the drive head access the same amount of data over shorter physical distances, improving performance dramatically in some instances. The Tech Report has an in-depth review of the 160GB Barracuda 7200.9's performance against eight competitors from Hitachi, Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital."
"Higher areal densities also allow the drive head access the same amount of data over shorter physical distances, improving performance dramatically in some instances. "
Yes but there is only two heads so it can't be all good.
(although two heads are better than one)
Actually the probability is higher with the newer drives since the air gap between the head and the disc surface is an order of magnitude smaller, in addition to the fact that the drives are spinning faster.
.. and for many others, I suspect:
Will be be sold with an ATA-133 interface as well as the usual SATA?
Some may argue that a drive like this is overkill, or even wasted, on an old machine but people like me - who spruce up old P3s bought on eBay by adding faster drives and RAM to make economical web PCs for friends and family - would love to get our grubby little mitts on a drive like this !
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
this is getting close to $0.50 per gigabite.
How expensive will perpendicular storage be?
The best test environment is production. - Me
chrome://browser/content/browser.xul
They don't include the SATA cable with the hard drive, and it is damn near impossible to find it in stores, or at least they were two and a half years ago when I bought mine. I ended up having to get one overnight shipped from a website specializing in cables which was damn expensive. The product itself is great, but the fact that there is no warning about this on the company website is really disingenuous.
I am a packrat, I save everything I can get and I have found that I can't fill more than 1 TB, so I think in a year or so you'll only ever need one HDD (and they'll be cheap enough to get 2 and make a RAID array for security). I burn everything to DVDs and I have a few TB of files on DVDs, so with BluRay/HD-DVD I think pretty much all our storage needs are met. Also, as a preemptive strike, no, none of it is porn.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Makes the future of the video store. Your movie card or "video store membership card" is an ipod-like device that stores the movie when you rent it .. and hooks up to the TV or video input directly (or maybe even has a short range TV transmitter) and understands your remote. To rent the next movie you bring the device to the store or download the nexyt movie (yeah you can download movies at home directly to the device if you dont want to visit the video store and browse). Shoulda got a patent (although i am sure others thought of it before me but that hasnt prevented patentability) oh well ..if anyone makes one of these send a check to my userid backslashdot.
My concern would be that anything that could affect a portion of the disk would destroy more data. I know scratches that aren't noticed on a CD can make a DVD unreadable and, while a drive platter may not have the risk of scratches that optical storage does, the general idea is the same. A physical failure, such as a head alignment issue, that wouldn't be noticed with lower densities may be a factor with the higher densities.
Now, I don't have a solution to the problem, but I just want to point out that getting full performance out of something can raise new risks.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
They already have cheaper prices.
last I calculated, 250gb Seagate SATA drives were roughly $0.42/GB
After looking over all the pretty graphs, it seems the 74gb Western Digital Raptor spanks the other drives in everything but platter density. And to push this farther I saw nothing about its reliability published. The 500gb hd isn't using the new platter technology and the 160gb drive is crippled compared to the larger brethren because of its smaller cache. The only thing I got from this review was that if I needed a drive that performs I should buy a Raptor.
You mean 1 TB ought to be enough for anybody ?
PATA is not cheaper than SATA. Prices of both technologies are generally within 5% of each other.
"Although perpendicular recording has yet to make its way into desktop hard drives..."
In case anyone hasn't already seen it: FLASH
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
This sure sounds like it came directly out of Seagate's marketing department.
Agreed. I work for an ISP in a small somewhat-rural Ohio town. *We* sell SATA cables and power adapters.
They are not that hard to find.
Just like driving a car:
(D) to go forward
(R) to go backward
"You'll stop needing more at some point."
When it exceeds your lifespan.
And hey... watch out, and don't forget, these fly-by-nighters only offer a 5 year warranty on their internal drives. And you can bet their drives are gonna die right after their warranty ends... ok, well, within 5 or 10 years of right after their warranty ends... ok, well... they can't last forever, can they?
The Admin and the Engineer
Serial ATA cables can be purchased for $2.99 at NewEgg, and I've never waited more than three days to get a package from them. Most come the next day if I order before noon. If you know you're going to be purchasing SATA in the future, buy your cables now and store them away. Hell, at that price, no one has an excuse not to buy some even if they don't think they'll be getting SATA in the near future. And a lot of local, mom-and-pop, PC builders will have SATA cables on hand if you MUST have one TODAY.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
On the other hand it is hitachi, home of the deathstar. Only drives I ever had problems with. NEXT.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
dont forget to check the bios supports 48bit LBA or you will only be able to use 130gb of that 160gb drive
SATA controllers are really cheap ($20) so its moot really, unless you dont have a free pci slot
The Raptor is much more expensive than other ATA drives because it's 10,000 RPM. Of course a more expensive drive is faster, but that doesn't necessarily make it better for many customers.
Mobile parts are going to become obsolete when flash memory gets cheaper. I can imagine in 20 years:
"OMG look at that! A SPINNING hard disk! What CPU are you running, a Pentium? PFFT..."
get real, this is slashdot. sweet hardware links will keep even the trolls at bay
I bought an external drive from Seagate and my experience with the drive was absolutely horrendous.
It was so unreliable that I had to return the drive and paid a restocking fee.
I thought it was just me, but these user reviews suggest otherwise.
Personally I would not touch another Seagate product with a 10 foot pole.
in your in depth reading of the review did you happen to notice that the Raptor is 10,000 RPMs?
It's nice to see these on the SATA drives, but what's keeping things like that from crossing back to SCSI that SATA has taken?
Sure, there are some people who will think cheapness has some good, but I'll take uncompromising quality with speed hands down nearly anytime. 500GB+ SCSI's time is overdue.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Why, this is the most exciting news I've heard since the last time it happened!
Which was about six months ago!
And six months before that, and six months before that, and six months before that, for more than a decade!
Well, [1000 GB is] about 700 [tightly-compressed] movies, I don't know of anyone owning more than 2 :P
What if you're involved in movie production? In that case, you'd probably use a codec that compresses less, such as DV or other intraframe transform codecs (less lossy, no motion dependencies) or Huffyuv (lossless).
Or perhaps you're building big ass database servers and want to put more redundancy into your array.
Someone tell me why this is news?
Is Seagate paying for this publicity?
I think I remember reading that Hitachi were going to come out with their perpendicular drives later this year. Perhaps we'll be seeing 1TB drives mid next year...
In any case, the standard iPod's hard drive is going to get a massive increase.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Anybody else not notice that the first link goes to the 13th page of the article before going to the next page and seeing Conclusion and going, "Wow, that article was brief...what just happened there?"
Great job!
Now, make one for the Mac Mini that runs silently.
That would be wonderful!
Noone said anthing about heat! I once cooked a burrito on an old 4g Seagate Barracuda. You know the one I'm talking about, with the big metal grille on the front. You see, I was at work, and tinkering with my Sparc 5 workstation, when I realized the fan in the external drive had failed, but not my home directory, upon which it lived. Well, of course I had a burrito handy, and figured that once I did a nice fsck -- twice -- that I'd be reasonably okay, so I put the burrito in the front of the bezel, where the faceplate is supposed to go, bounced the workstation, and started the fsck. Then I went outside to smoke cigarettes. After smoking for a while, and socializing with people, the burrito was no longer frozen, but HOT! Voila, instant sysadmin lunch. Ramen noodles are just as easy, simply take...
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Now if they could only make one that would last longer than 6 months, I'd be happy. (my 200 GB Seagate lasted 7 months)
"costs under $90"
That's nice, but notice how you can get a normal 160GB for around $70-$75? $80 if you want SATA.
"I'm a well-wisher, in that I don't wish you any specific harm."
Well, atleast they're consistant....
In your future, probably around June-July, you should see an article about a hard drive manufacture that was able to some how, beyond everyone's expectations, cram approximatly 25% more data per platter than ever before! Infact, using my crystal ball (i.e. xcalc) it'll probably be around 200GB.
There will probably be some people asking if it will run on linux.
There will be some people who say they couldn't imagine needing that much
There will be some people stating how happy they are that they can now store 40 more GB of porn per platter than ever before.
There will probably even be a few dupes.
Good times will be had by all.
-=JML=-
You are only reading or writing to one surface at a time. There is only a single lane between the channel interface and the Head Stack Array.
If you increase the bits per track then performance increases. However, if you increase the total number of tracks your data rates doesn't increase. In fact, you make it harder to settle on track which hurts seek times.
All the latest increases in areal density have been due to increased TPI (tracks per inch). This is the reason (besides spinning faster) that the Raptor has held the performance crown for so long.
I am sorry but, in pursuit of the ultimate storage density, one thing I have noticed over the last few years is that ALL drive manufacturers are sacrificing reliability!
Since drives have passed about the 40 Gbyte barrier, I notice many more failures and ever increasing drive failures. Storage density is one thing; drive reliability is completely another!
160 Gbytes on one platter doesn't do me one damned bit of good if I cannot read the data.
- we have a disk that has two heads instead of eight.
- we have like 20-30% higher plate density
performance math: will be like quite slower
ad campaign: we'll say it's faster, noone will notice anyway
Subject said it all.
It is called an iPod+iTunes. Nothing new!
http://homepage.mac.com/chevyorange
Simple math and obvious reasoning clearly shows why two heads are better than six:
Suppose that we have two disks: One with one platter/two heads, and another with three platters/six heads. Both hold 160GB of data. And for the sake of argument, the platters of each disk have equal physical area to one another.
Now, sure, the three-platter sandwich has 3 times as much read/write hardware, but it is only a third the density of the double-sided disk (else, it would be 480GB). (Oh: And you might bother to realize that those three pairs of heads cannot move independantly on a modern hard drive.)
So anyway, plainly there is no advantage to using a lot of low density platters. It's something like d*3/3=d for the three-plattered machine, and just d=d for the single platter drive. It is therefore the same bloody thing in terms of potential data rate.
However, by having removed 2/3 of the moving parts, you also substantially increase the potential for reliability, by simple virtue of having fewer things which can break. This is important: What good is 160GB of data that just ate itself?
And, power consumption DOES go down - there's a lot less work to be done by removing a bunch of excess mass, and therefore less power is required. (If you think otherwise, please document your beliefs and submit them for consideration for the next Nobel prize - perpetual motion is within your reach.)
And when power consumption goes down, so does heat generation (hard drives turn almost all of the energy they consume into heat).
And noise. There's a lot less rotating mass, and therefore a lot less noise from the bearings and motor. There's also a lot less mass in the head assembly, therefore a lot less noise/vibration gets transferred to the case of the machine by the head actuator by simple inertia and momentum. (Fewer heads means less radiating area for any direct accoustic output from the head mechanism, as well.)
I mean: Think about it. Please.
Or don't: It doesn't matter one way or the other, to me, whether or not you're an idiot. But listen, kid, the only reason we've even GOT 160GB drives at ALL is the development of a whole fuckton of small, largely measningless, incremental improvements in density, and motor design, and bearings, and heads, and controllers, and so on.
This is just another step in the same forward direction that the storage industry has been moving in for decades.
Well, that was annoying. All they needed was this:
Well shit, the first group looks like those annoying emoticon things. I give up.
Seagate to create a 160GB Barracuda 7200.9 hard drive
The Tech Report has an in-depth review of the 160GB Barracuda 7200.9's performance against eight competitors from Hitachi, Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital.
My money's on Seagate over Seagate in the 7th round.
1 DVD is about ~5gb.. probably not that long before 1000 movie collections start floating around.. then 10,000.. or more.
Once storage and transmission technologies work themselves out there will be a tremendous renaissaince of video content generation. Not the crappy stuff we have now, HD video. For everything. When we've filled up the media then, who knows. 3D video. pr0n will find an application.
Right now, we still can't beat that old station wagon full of removable media just yet.
..don't panic
Seagate 7200.7 200GByte drives. Qty (6). 1 Failure in 11 months of use. (2 per system, 3 systems, running 24/7).
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I can buy a complete 733mhz P3 with 128Mb RAM, 10Gb HDD for less than £30. All that needs to be added is a new HDD and extra RAM (bought for £2 per 64mb). Can't beat that price building new
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Last week, I bought a 250GB SATA drive for $89, after rebate. It was a Seagate too.
I had 256Meg RAM for laptops lying around (from my iBook times) and I was bold enough to try if Mac RAM would work. It did. Now I have 512Meg total. The 6Gig became to small last fall and I bought a 80Gig laptop harddisk for 117€.
So for a mere 242€, I now have a nice laptop that does everything I need. Okay, battery life is only 30 minutes, but I don't care.
I know one can get laptops for about 800€ these days, but I paid significantly less and don't need much more power. (Actually, the new harddisk really made a noticeable difference)
Still, the basic configuration of P-III 600MHz, 256Meg RAM and 6Gig harddisk would be more than enough for basic needs. Especially for someone casually surfing the internet and writing the occasional letter.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Simple math and obvious reasoning clearly shows...
;-) The point is that I wasn't claiming independent movement. I was expecting lock-step movement, so you could consider the tracks read simultaneously as part of a larger logical track. Unfortunately, I suspect Agripa knew what he was talking about, and that head alignment can only be achieved on one head at a time.
/. review the Barracuda is the quietest. You fell for it didn't you. I guess there is more to it than what's obvious.
Allow me to interrupt. Does this really shound authoritative to you? My comparison was between multiple platters and a %25 increase in density. If it was triple desnsity, I wouldn't have made the argument. I suppose that's what you meant by "obvious"?
And you might bother to realize that those three pairs of heads cannot move independantly on a modern hard drive
OK, it's now been established that neither of us know much about hard drive engineering. Anywhere else this would make us humble
Finally, would you like an example of a dual platter drive which is much quieter than this supposed gift to modern science? The Samsung Spinpoint is highly recommended for HTPCs. Funny how in the
My advice to you? Be like a hard drive. Read more. Write less.
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
Did you RTFA ? I don't find it surprising that the Samsung drive doesn't win this test - as they didn't test any drives from Samsung.
While I agree it would've been interesting to see a test of the Samsung lineup in addition to the drives tested, I've yet to see any reviews that test all types and brands of a certain technology in a field as varied as hard drives. While sponors might account for a bias on some cases, the fact remains that most of these sites have a relatively small budget.
Personaly I'd rather see 4 or 5 disks tested on identical hardware, by the same people, using the same method and meassuring tools, than compare apples to oranges.
On a side note, did anyone else find it interesting that the 80GB drives are listed as using 160GB platters ?
Not in stock right now, but I recently bought a 20cm SATA data cable for 33 pence here in the UK from Ebuyer - they have other cables (longer ones usually) at, oooh, 60 pence or more. SATA cables are *everywhere* (and very cheap) now, hardly surprising considering that all new desktop drives seem to be SATA.
I don't care what anyone else says I've used numerous hard drives over the years in various desktops, servers etc. and Seagate are defeinitely my number 1 choice. Much quieter and more reliable than anything else.
Just my tuppence worth.
The review's right! Raptors rule, & I know first-hand: I own both types (Smaller 36gb & also the Larger 74gb, both @ 10,000 rpm, & both 5 year enterprise-class warrantied as well). They are VERY fast...
Hey, as far as performance? There's NO doubt of my subject line!
You'd have to argue with the numbers from the test, & they're reflected in most EVERY IDE/EIDE speed-test out there ever done since the Western Digital Raptor 10k rpm family intro'd... & we all pretty much know this, right?
But, if not? Well - See the test results (especially performance-speed oriented ones, most of them) from the article, & tell me different!
(For the most purposes, judging by its wins in more events in that test than ANY other disk especially performance-wise? Well, like I said above - tell me different!)
They may only be in 36gb &/or 74gb size, but if you need more storage than that? Go offline if possible storing files, or use them RAID'd/striped/spanned!
(NTFS compression (reliable as hell imo & experience) buys you even more space though if you opt NOT to do those options for more space above, & with many bennies!)
E.G.-> With some VERY MINOR decompress time during loads into RAM of exe's or data once filesystem compressed like NTFS can do, which today's FAST cpu's offset massively anyhow? Well, since the files are smaller to read up off disk (once in ram decompression via filesystem drivers occurs & is CPU + memory speed driven), you get FASTER overall access time to them anyhow - & raptors? RULE ON ACCESS TIMES due to their ATA/SATA/PATA-IDE/EIDE unprecedented 10,000 rpm speeds of disk rotation!)
They're up there with the best from the Ultra-ScSi 15,000rpm world in many a way... w/out even using NCQ (they have TCQ though, but most times that needs a special adapter iirc).
APK
P.S.=> Again, I actually know & use them & can say 1 thing:
They truly ARE the best & fastest disks I've ever owned & I've owned most all vendors types & many models (ScSi-UltraScSi/IDE-EIDE (PATA/SATA)) from them in 16 years of PC-Computing...
They're AWESOME, truly awesome HDD's, no b.s.!
Hey I run 2 of 'em here (74gb bootdisk & its earlier 36gb sibling - fast as hell, reliable, & 5 year enterprise class warranties!
Personally, my take on it's simple, & this is it again in a nutshell:
If you're into building a FAST personal computer?
They're just the pre-requisite for a PC-hotrod for the price/performance mix if you go IDE/EIDE - & can compete with the BEST of the UltraScSi world w/out the added price of a high-end adapter for SCSI (if you're mobo doesn't have one, & most don't really for normal PC's, maybe serverboards do)!... apk
cables? what cables. I am waiting for the 500Gb wifi Seagate HDD. forget ATA/SATA. say hello to the future.
Useless did you know #887: My
There has been a Storage Review review out for a while which has shown conclusively that platter size doesn't really matter that much. The 160gb platter 7200.9 160gb drive is SLOWER then the 125gb 7200.9 500gb drive!
well, maybe any test other than those against seagate's 36/74/146GB 15k drives :)
Don't be afraid to use terms like bandwidth, throughput, seek time, cache access etc.
Single platter solutions result in reduced amount of heads. Less heads = less weight to push across the platter = higher acceleration at same force applied = lower seek times, the head moves faster, can find the place faster.
But the bottleneck point in throughput lies between the surface of the disk and the head, a single head can read just as many bytes per second, the limits are pushed higher but still this is the point that makes read slow once the seek was finished. So all heads read/write at once, a single large file gets spread over all the platters, but at narrow band of cyllinders, so it can be read whole faster, by using all the heads to read parts of it at once, and reassemble the data in the cache. Less heads = less paralell readouts, lower throughput.
I find much more future in big multi-platter drives based on the new tech, than this single-platter thing, that offers little gain and much loss at a very high price.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
if you need more storage than that? Go offline if possible storing files, or use them RAID'd/striped/spanned!
I use a Raptor as the boot drive, and then a more normal large drive for data. When it's my turn for a new PC next year, I was going to use two of the little Raptors in a RAID 0, but I was still expecting to add a data drive later.
Did you RTFA ? I don't find it surprising that the Samsung drive doesn't win this test - as they didn't test any drives from Samsung.
That was my point exactly. I need to learn to be more direct here on Slashdot. So they could afford 9 Hard drives, and they happened to choose a field that made that made Seagate look good. You think it's coincidence, I think it's more like a Gartner paid study.
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
much like they came with an ata133 cable, an audio cable, a floppy disk cable, and a nice assortment of screws I will probably never need.
but I didn't use them. I set up a four ata133 hd RAID0. Since the hds were independantly controlled thier continued data transfer was 114% the burst rate of a single sata150 drive according to sissandra.
'twas the nicest setup I ever had. The fear of rebuilding after a failure was too great tho and I had to dismantle the raid.
"He's a real midnight golfer"
w00t! think of all that PrOn
Oh, I agree to a good extent, but...
I noted that @ the very end of my reply.
So, please, read the rest of my reply before you reply on that note... you weren't an ass to me, & neither am I saying that in reply. Just making sure you realize I did note such things.
(The WD Raptor, especially the larger/faster 74gb (as opposed to its older tinier 'brother' @ 36gb) gives even the HIGHEST end 15k rpm UltraScSi drives a GREAT run, & especially for the money)
These raptor disks @ 10k rpm DO tend to give even the 15k rpm disks from Seagate & iirc, Fujitsu may also have one by now, a run for their money @ less cost (typically))... a good site for seeing this is:
www.storagereview.com
Via their dynamically populated database comparison of disks system: It's excellent (that is what that site concentrates on - disks, period)
So, as I noted in my init post reply?
The WD raptors not only compete great with UltraScSi, but also ALL w/out having to buy an UltraScSi adapter as well, adding to the cost of purchase when you go SCSI...
I know, I've been there many times in years' past, getting or having to get usually (because most mobos don't have them built on) an Adaptec UltraScSi adapter (which usually do VERY well & have drivers that are good stuff also, but are a bit pricey for the higher-end models).
APK
P.S.=> Yes, the 'raptors' are pricey by comparison to their 7200k rpm brethren out there, but as you can see, they kick their butts as well & also give an "enterprise-class" warranty of 5 years too!
I had 1 die on me (36gb type) & WD sent me the BIGGER/FASTER 74gb in return on the RMA, & best part?
NO CHARGE!
Can't beat THAT with a stick... apk
Surely you mean $0.33/GB, not $.033/GB, right?
Otherwise, off what truck are you getting a 250 GB drive for $8.25?!
The cheapest I've seen was $0.125/GB ($20 for 160 GB after two mail-in rebates and a $20 off coupon).
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
The people in those reviews seem to be complaining about 'Delayed Write Errors'. That is NOT an issue with the hardware, it is a software issue. I also think it is unique to Firewire, at least in my experience. I had that issue with my Maxtors which were Firewire, especially when I daisy-chained them instead of plugging each one into its own port, or unplugged a drive without 'Safely' removing it using the tray icon. I haven't had a single error with the Seagates using USB 2.0 yet and I've had them over 6 months.
"Our business ships desktops units to liquor stores. Last year, every system we've put together uses Maxtor brand drives (one model number is 6E040L0). So far 95% of all those drives have failed. In several cases, we RMA'd the drive for a new one and that one has failed as well. This is all within one year."
I'm wondering how many of these Maxtors are dying due to inadequate cooling? I've had Maxtors and IBM's die. I now have Seagates AND I put cooling fans on both of them. That brought the temparture down at least 12 degrees if not more.
We run a computer lab at the Poly. This is a REAL lab, i.e. students pull PC's apart, install component such as hard drives, install OS's (yes, we do teach Linux!), build networks from scratch etc. etc. We've been doing this since '98, and so far one thing is as clear as glass: Seagate rules, full stop. The students really hammer the PC's and we of course always try to be cost conscious. To make it very simple: Seagate by far is the best; Maxtor by far the worse. Moral of story: stay away from Maxtor, buy Seagate. And no, I am not associated with Seagate in any way; just some honest to God experience talking.
It's cheaper to use one head and one side of a 160GB platter with a flip side that's out of spec. Otherwise, have to toss the platter (or strip the magnetics and replate).