Hard disk drive capacity continues to increase at breakneck speed

Earlier this week, Hitachi GST (soon to be part of Western Digital) announced they would soon ship a 1 TB single-platter hard disk drive. But archrival Seagate rained on their parade financing immediate shipment of their own 4 TB unit. With the industry consolidating rapidly, it’s good to see healthy competition among the two remaining hard disk drive giants.

Seagate’s 4 TB GoFlex Desk

The 4 TB GoFlex Desk sets a new capacity record for hard disk drives

I’ve been quite impressed by Seagate’s GoFlex family of hard disk drives, and have bought quite a few for my own personal use. I love being able to mix and match interfaces based on immediate needs: I snap on a FireWire dock for bulk transfers from my Mac, then hand off the drive with a USB dock for maximum compatibility.

Seagate has been quite aggressive in pricing their GoFlex drives as well. I recently picked up a pair of 3 TB GoFlex Desk drives at Best Buy for under $140 each. The idea that I could buy 6 TB of capacity for under $300 is really mind blowing!

Now Seagate has announced immediate shipment of the highest capacity drive yet. The 4 TB GoFlex Desk drive will be available for a suggested retail price of $249.99, and will likely drop quickly below.

Hitachi GST’s 1 TB Deskstar 7K1000.D

Hitachi GST's Deskstar 7K1000 line packs 1 TB on a single platter

A few days before this, Hitachi GST announced that they would soon ship a single platter 1 TB hard disk drive, the Deskstar 7K1000.D. This marks the first time any hard disk drive company has been able to squeeze a terabyte onto a single 3.5 inch platter, and suggests that Hitachi may soon introduce a 4 TB four platter hard disk drive of their own.

Increasing areal density is a constant trend in the storage industry, but it is important since performance and thermal efficiency are driven by it. A four platter 4 TB hard disk drive will have somewhat faster sequential access performance than a less dense drive and will run cooler as well.

Stephen’s Stance

This is really an amazing capacity point, but Seagate’s method and timing is a little suspect. The company reached the 4 TB mark by packing five 800 GB hard disk platters into a single drive. Considering how hot my GoFlex Desk drives run, I’m somewhat concerned by this. Clearly, Seagate took a shortcut so they could jump ahead of Western Digital/Hitachi GST in claiming to be the first to ship a 4 TB hard disk drive, but it’s likely that a family of 1 TB per platter Seagate drives will be released shortly as well. So goes the march of progress!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Seagate Jumps Hitachi’s Density Record With 4 TB Hard Disk Announcement
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Many enterprise SSD makers are familiar to storage folks like myself, including Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, Imation, Intel, Samsung, Seagate, and Toshiba. Readers of my blog may also recognize Fusion-io, LSI, Micron, OCZ Technology, Texas Memory Systems, and Viridant from my recent coverage, and may have heard of Solid Access Systems, Anobit, Pliant (now part of SanDisk), and others. But some names remain unfamiliar, at least for now. And others, notably Nimbus Data and Violin Memory, are puzzlingly missing from the StorageNewsletter list.

So here’s my rundown of the enterprise SSD makers to keep an eye on in the coming year!

For fun, I am grouping these by how much contact I had with them over the previous year. Although obviously not the most scientific measure of their impact on the storage world, perhaps this will help highlight those that are reaching out to independent bloggers like myself.

Well-Known SSD Players

See also Micron Bursts Into the PCIe SSD Market

First up is a group of companies that I’m quite familiar with, having recently been briefed on their SSD plans and products.

1. LSI
2. Micron
3. Nimbus Data
4. Texas Memory Systems

Next is a list of companies that, although I have contacts of one sort or another, I eagerly anticipate future briefings regarding SSD technology.

1. Anobit
2. Intel
3. Fusion-io
4. Hitachi GST
5. Seagate Technology
6. Stec
7. Violin Memory

SSD Contenders

See also Toshiba Offers “Blade” SSDs (Like Apple’s MacBook Air)

I have spotted the following companies at conferences, in industry publications, and on the web and feel that I am somewhat familiar with their SSD plans. But I welcome any opportunity to get to know them better, and encourage them to contact me via e-mail or by telephone.

1. OCZ Technology
2. Imation
3. Samsung
4. SanDisk / Pliant Technology
5. Solid Access
6. Toshiba
7. Viking Modular Solutions
8. Virident Systems

Who?!?

I was surprised to see this set of companies listed in the StorageNewsletter article, and more surprised when I went to their website and found that they were working on genuine and interesting enterprise SSD products. I would love to get in contact with folks at these companies so I can learn more about what they are up to!

1. BiTMICRO Networks
2. Foremay
3. Macrotron Systems
4. pureSilicon
5. RunCore
6. Smart Modular Technologies
7. Super Talent

Stephen’s Stance

In all, I located 25 companies that build solid-state storage devices for the enterprise market. My quick examination of their websites (or previous knowledge of the companies) reveals a wonderful and vibrant culture of innovation around solid-state storage technology. Watch this space over the next year, since I intend to cover the SSD space in detail!

I would like to thank Jean-Jacques Maleval for spurring my research into these enterprise SSD companies. He is really doing a great job over at StorageNewsletter, and I recommend that you subscribe!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | My Incomplete, Subjective List of Enterprise SSD Companies
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Seagate's massive 1000 GB laptop drive is almost here, packing almost 800 Gb per square inch!

Seagate is one of the world’s most-successful hard disk drive companies, consistently ranked first in overall sales for a decade. The company is respected for their high-end products, but is aggressively moving into the world of smaller hard disks for laptops and portable storage as well. The company’s mainstream “Momentus” portable hard disk family has kept pace with the industry, but Seagate will soon break away with a major jump in areal density. Using public information, and the first product in this line, we will consider what Seagate’s eighth-generation Momentus family will look like.

Looking Back (5400.6 and 5400.7)

The sixth- and seventh-generation Momentus families were solid performers, selling fairly well especially in Seagate’s own line of FreeAgent portable USB hard disks. The company has always named its Momentus families using the speed and generation. Thus, the sixth generation of 5400 rpm drives was 5400.6 and the seventh generation was 5400.7.

The successful sixth-generation product reached 250 GB per 2.5″ platter, or an areal density of 394 gigabits per square inch. The “small form factor” drives in this family included a variety of riffs on the same theme of 125 GB per “surface” or head. Therefore, we had a 500 GB 2-platter drive, a 250 GB single-platter drive, as well as 320 GB and a 160 GB offerings.

The current Momentus products belong to the seventh generation, though Seagate appears to be de-emphasizing the “5400.7″ name. Although the name is mentioned on the web site, Seagate appears to want the entire Momentus line to appear more coherent and less generational. The product manual is pretty hard to locate, too.

The drives themselves feature 507 gigabit per square inch for nearly 320 GB per platter. This yields the 640 GB, 500 GB, and 400 GB 2-platter offerings as well as the single platter drives with 320 GB, 250 GB, and 160 GB.

One major differentiator for the 5400.7 family was the introduction of 4K “Advanced Format” offerings. These use larger sectors for increased efficiency, larger capacity, and better data protection but could be incompatible with certain older computers and operating systems. All hard disk drive manufacturers, including Seagate, have committed to using Advanced Format for new drive models introduced after the first of January, 2011. Although offered as part of the Momentus 5400.7 family, the Advanced Format drives were apparently only sold preformatted and in portable drives that would not likely be used incorrectly.

The areal density of the Momentus 5400.7 line was impressive, but 640 GB was just not much of a step up from the 500 GB capacity point of the previous family. So it received relatively little attention.

Introducing the Terabyte Laptop Drive

Seagate needs to move forward with a major new capacity point, and they appear to be doing exactly that. As noted last week, the Seagate GoFlex family now includes a slim 1 TB portable drive. This unit includes the next-generation hard disk technology, and we expect an impressive new family of products to appear shortly. We aren’t sure if the “5400.8″ name will be applied, but these new Momentus models will push capacity all the way to 1.5 TB (with 3 platters), and the increased areal density will push the cost per GB to a new low.

After being briefed for my previous writeup on Seagate’s GoFlex 1 TB, the company offered to send me a drive for evaluation. I accepted, and was eager to connect it to my test rig and take a look. Although the drive information is obscured by USB and FireWire connections, eSATA reveals that it has a very Momentus-looking name: ST91000420AS. This name includes a new family identifier (the “4″ in “420″) and confirms it as a 2-platter unit (the “2″ in that number), as if the thinness of the FreeAgent wasn’t enough proof. The company confirmed that the new 1.5 TB GoFlex portable drive contains a 3-platter variant of this same family.

A little deductive reasoning suggests that this new Momentus family will include, in addition to the known 1.5 TB and 1 TB models, offerings sized at 750 GB, 500 GB, and 250 GB. We may also see a 1.2 TB model, though the value of that capacity point is questionable. Given the naming for the 1 TB model, we have suggested names (in italics) for the rest of the family.

It is likely that every model will feature 4 K “Advanced Format” sectors internally. Since Seagate has developed their own “SmartAlign” in-drive sector size compensation technology (more on that another day), it will not be necessary to call out the difference anymore.

Given that the 5400.6 had 394 Gb/in and 250 GB platters and the 5400.7 has 507 Gb/in and 320 GB platters, this new family likely has about 790 Gb/in for its 500 GB platters. This is a very impressive number, easily besting rivals Western Digital and Hitachi GST.

Stephen’s Stance

This new product family will really shake up the portable storage market. It will single-handedly alter both the high- and low-capacity limits found in everything from laptops to portable drives. And other drive vendors will have to scramble to reach the nearly-800 Gb/in technology Seagate is using.

Seagate already had the most-desirable laptop disk, the killer 500 GB hybrid Momentus XT. Now they will be introducing another lust-worthy drive, the 1 TB Momentus 5400.8. With 2 platters, 9 mm thinness, and low power usage, I expect this to quickly become the top capacity offering for laptop makers. And the fact that each platter side has 250 GB means that the 160 GB capacity point will vanish in favor of 250 GB as the minimum configuration.

And one final note: Applying this technology to a 3.5 inch form factor gives us over 1 TB per platter in a drive like Seagate’s 5900 rpm Barracuda LP series. Since those cases already hold 4 platters, we could see a new line of Barracuda LP drives with 4 TB of capacity very soon!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Forecasting Seagate’s Next-Generation Momentus 5400.8 Family
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Advanced Format is on the rise, with Western Digital and now Hitachi GST supporting the 4K drive addressing method

Given the IDEMA’s statement that all drive makers will transition to Advanced Format as of January, 2011, this article has been substantially updated.

Another limit is being pushed in computers: The 32-bit LBA addressing mode. Hard disk drives have simply become too big for the 2.1 TB allowed by 32-bit LBA and 512 K sectors. Western Digital was first to answer this challenge with “Advanced Format“, and Seagate took an alternate 48-bit LBA route while also supporting AF. Now Hitachi GST introduced an Advanced Format drive of their own. Will the industry ever adopt 48-bit LBA?

Two Options Past 2.1 TB

As explained in detail in my piece, Taming Monster Disk Drives: 3 TB and Beyond!, the current hard disk addressing scheme tops out around 2.1 TB. There are two simple factors in this equation:

1. There are 4,294,967,296 addressable blocks in a 32-bit “namespace”, and this is all most PCs can handle
2. Each block is 512 bytes in size, and has been since dinosaurs sold the computers

If we multiply 4,294,967,296 times 512, we get 2,147,483,648 KB of capacity. In wacky base-10 storage industry speak, this is 2.15 TB of capacity. No hard disk drive can be larger than this while obeying these limits.

The solution to the problem is simple: Increase one value or the other and the issue vanishes. Although older computers can’t handle a change to either, it’s equally simple to engineer hardware and software that can.

The hard disk drive manufacturers have two roads forward, and they are not mutually-exclusive:

1. Western Digital was first out with an “Advanced Format” drive late in 2009. This addresses the (archaic) block size limit, increasing it from 512 bytes to 4 kilobytes. With each address now eight times larger, we need one-eighth as many addresses for a given drive size. Advanced Format drives can grow to 16 TB without hitting the 32-bit LBA size limit.
2. Seagate attacked the other variable, increasing the address space to the full 48 bits specified in the LBA standard. This gives an amazing 128 petabytes of capacity even with tiny 512 byte blocks.

Both of these solutions have issues with older systems, but many current machines can handle either with ease. Apple Macintosh machines are set, since they use modern EFI firmware and have had capable driver software since OS X 10.4 “Tiger”. PCs running recent versions of Windows can generally use larger disks as long as long as they don’t try to boot from them. External USB or FireWire drives ought to be fine with every computer, too.

Hitachi GST Joins Western Digital With Advanced Format

The 4K “Advanced Format” solution is gaining traction, with both Western Digital and Hitachi GST currently selling drives supporting it. Seagate introduced 48-bit addressing and has also begun to support Advanced Format, quietly introducing the technology in their Momentus line. Toshiba and Samsung are expected to adopt Advanced Format soon as well.

Interestingly, Hitachi GST introduced Advanced Format on a line of 2.5-inch drives that top out at just 750 GB. It is curious that they chose to introduce it in a product line that will not likely breach the 2 TB limit in its lifetime. It is likely that this is a sign of the company’s commitment, however, and that future 3.5-inch products will share the same Advanced Format controller chipsets used here. See the excellent Hitachi Advanced Format brief for more information on the technology.

Stephen’s Stance

I see the innovations of 48-bit LBA and Advanced Format as a welcome sign of change in the hard disk drive industry. Inevitably, both variables must be addressed: 512 bytes is simply too small for modern applications, and the 32-bit LBA limit will inevitably become a constraint regardless. The industry must push both forward sooner or later, and I am glad to see it happening even if only in pieces.

The PC makers’ stubborn support of BIOS and MBR is much more of a concern. Switching to a modern system firmware like EFI would only cost a few pennies, and modern operating systems are ready for the change. Indeed, a few PCs come with EFI already, and Apple adopted it wholesale years ago. Similarly, GPT is ready to take over for MBR if only the PC software makers would stand and support the change.

MBR and BIOS are the real enemies here, whether we are discussing hard disk drive formats or filesystem limitations. Backwards compatibility is nice, but the Wintel PC world will be forced to make the change eventually. Since external hard disk drives work equally well regardless of partition scheme and most PC users will never upgrade their hardware, maintaining BIOS and MBR in PCs is really a question of penny-pinching anyway. It’s time for Microsoft to push PC vendors to make the change.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Hitachi GST Joins WD On The “Advanced Format” Hard Disk Drive Bandwagon
This post was categorized as Apple, Enterprise storage, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

It would have made more sense if a vendor of fully-automated integrated tiered storage arrays was the first: Although Western Digital impressed me and others with these big drives, they aren’t going to be speed demons. Pillar suggests that they can make effective use of this capacity without killing overall performance thanks to their QoS technology and the ability to mix drive types in the same frame, but this isn’t the same as the granular, dynamic tiering some vendors offer.

Who will be next? And when will it be Hitachi GST’s turn in the sun?

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Pillar First To Put Faith In 2 TB Enterprise Drives
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

But the era of the 2 TB enterprise hard disk drive is not quite here yet. It is not clear which Xyratex-made products will support the massive drive since the company is an OEM supplier, but IBM ought to be on the list. Once a vendor announces product, it could take months for these monster arrays to ship.

One issue with these massive drives is RAID protection. These massive drives must be protected with dual-parity RAID-6 or similar. Although drive capacity has been growing, transfer speed has not kept up: A 2 TB drive, running at full speed, would take upwards of 10 hours to rebuild its contents, an unacceptably-long window for a single-parity RAID-5 setup.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | 2 TB Enterprise Drives Are Here?
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Not For Laptops

As we’ve discussed before, modern laptops require thin 9.5 mm drives, which usually translates into two-platter units. This new WD Scorpio Blue is a three-platter, 12.5 mm design. So although this drive will certainly see lots of use in the hot mobile external drive market, we will not likely start seeing 1 TB laptops quite yet.

Note that Seagate rolled out a 640 GB FreeAgent Go USB drive last month. Although the company still hasn’t officially revealed the drive mechanism inside this mobile drive, we have surmised that it uses the 9.5 mm laptop-friendly two-platter design with 333 GB per platter. The new WD unit uses the same platter size and density, taking more wind out of Western Digital’s sails.

Shaking Up External Storage

But since both the initial WD and Seagate drives are aimed at the portable USB unit market rather than landing inside laptops, WD’s announcement of both 1 TB and 750 GB sizes should give it a nice differentiator on the shelves of retail stores.

Seagate has relied on 9.5 mm drives for quite a while, so it is unlikely to be able to match WD’s capacity for quite some time. We expect Hitachi GST and Samsung to quickly match WD’s capacity point with 3-platter 12.5 mm units, as they have done in the past, enabling OEMs like Iomega and LaCie to meet WD’s challenge. It remains to be seen if Seagate and Toshiba will ship 3-platter drive units to compete or wait until they can reach 1 TB with two-platter drives.

Enterprise Implications?

All of this talk of increased capacity inevitably leads to the question of whether these units will find their way into data centers and enterprise storage systems. At this point, Western Digital has not been very successful in the enterprise space, so this particular drive is unlikely to play there, either. But a potential 1 TB Hitachi GST response could indeed be used in enterprise storage.

More interesting is the impact that these 333 GB platters will have. Even if 1 TB drives don’t arrive in enterprise storage units today, this new areal density mark is likely to trickle up to this market. With HP announcing that they would shift to the 2.5 inch form factor for all of their enterprise storage products over the next few years, derivative high-capacity drives from other manufacturers could be the first real entry in the enterprise space.

Conclusion

So although this announcement will not shake the laptop or enterprise markets, it does promise to inject new energy into the portable external drive segment, likely reducing prices for existing products as well. After all, with a 1 TB drive sitting on the shelf, who would want to buy a 250 GB drive even at half the price?

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | WD’s 1 TB Laptop Drive? Not Quite!
This post was categorized as Computer History, Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

• First up is Seagate, with their next-generation 3.5″ “7200.12″ drive family. Boasting 500 GB per platter, the drives are initially offered in 500 GB, 750 GB, and 1 TB versions, but we expect a 1.5 TB three-platter and perhaps a 2.0 TB 4-platter version to arrive shortly. Seagate claims a new areal density achievement with 329 Gb per square inch. Rumors are that Seagate is winding down development of 3.5″-platter disk drives, however, in favor of the 2.5″ form factor. 
• Western Digital is also shipping a new two-platter 500 GB Scorpio Blue mobile drive in volume. Unlike competing products from Samsung and Hitachi, WD was able to achieve the 500 GB mark in the WD5000BEVT with only two platters, comfortably fitting into the common 9.5 mm laptop drive cavity.

So why is a 2-platter design important? Simply put, fewer platters equals less power and heat, and more density equals more performance. But there’s more to it than power and heat: As Tom’s Hardware points out, greater platter density moves the sweet spot of the market to a new capacity threshold. Since manufacturers prefer to offer inexpensive single-platter drives in their mainstream products, these products point to a new 250 GB and 500 GB standard for inexpensive laptops and desktops, respectively. Further, expect to see 250 GB portable and 500 GB desktop external drives drop to new rock-bottom prices.

All of the major drive manufacturers are moving forward, of course. Hitachi GST has already announced 375 Gb per inch technology, and Western Digital is expected to launch a 2 TB 3.5″ drive unit soon. The 250 GB/500 GB 2.5″/3.5″ per-platter threshold should last through the year in shipping products, but expect announcements of 320 GB/750 GB or higher through 2009.

Maybe I’ll swap out my MacBook Pro’s 320 GB internal drive for a new 500 GB unit once these hit the stores! And today’s imminent announcement of a 1 TB 2-drive Mac Mini suggests that Apple will be offering 500 GB 2.5″ disk drives in their products starting now.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | I’ll Have Two Platters of Sheer Storage Madness, Please!
This post was categorized as Apple, Enterprise storage, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.