Seagate Begins to Ship 2.5-Inch, 7mm Thick 2 TB Mobile Hard Drives with SMR

Seagate has started to ship its highest-capacity hard drives for notebooks. The new HDDs use shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology with very high areal density as well as slimmed-down mechanics.

The new Seagate Mobile HDD 2 TB is the first hard drive to market in a 2.5-inch/7 mm form-factor with such extreme capacity. The hard drive is based on two 1 TB SMR platters running at 5400 RPM and features 128 MB of cache as well as SATA interface. The maximum sustainable transfer rate of the HDD is 100 MB/s, which is considerably lower than that of mainstream mobile hard drives (145 – 169 MB/s for Seagate’s own laptop HDDs). Seagate declares 13 ms average seek time for the hard drives. The new HDD weighs 3.17 oz (or 90 grams) and is aimed primarily at mobile computers or bulk cold storage, where you can arguably fit eight drives into a single 5.25-inch bay. Supermicro has an 88-bay 4U rack unit where each drive is hotswappable, though that fits a large PC in the rear; if hot-swappable isn’t required, we could be looking at nearly 200+ per storage 4U rack with appropriate backplanes.

Three sets of drives will be offered, in 1TB and 2TB configurations: 

The SMR technology enables areal densities higher than 1 Tbit per square inch, but at the cost of performance. HDDs featuring shingled recording write new magnetic tracks that overlap part of the previously written tracks, which may slowdown writing since the architecture requires HDDs to rewrite adjacent tracks after any writing operation. In order to “hide” such peculiarities of SMR, Seagate has developed special firmware that ensures optimal writing performance. Part of the reason why Seagate installs a massive 128 MB cache on a 2 TB HDD is because the firmware needs it to store data from tracks that have to be overwritten. Alternatively, it is required to alter operating systems and software, which is not economically feasible.

Usage of SMR technology is justified in environments that are used to archive cold data that is not updated frequently because write performance of such HDDs may be rather slow. Client PCs both read and record data and it remains to be seen whether performance offered by SMR-based client HDDs will be sufficient for the end-user. The Seagate Mobile HDD 2 TB is around 60% slower than the Seagate Laptop HDD 2 TB based on maximum sustainable transfer rate.

Seagate did not disclose whether SMR platters used inside the Mobile HDD 2 TB are made in-house, or by Showa Denko K.K. (SDK), the world’s largest independent producer of hard drive platters. In addition to SMR technology, Seagate used its new mechanics, including new head, preamp, channel and other mechanisms for the Mobile HDD 2 TB HDD. Slimmed down mechanical components allowed Seagate to integrate two platters into a 7 mm hard drive.

Seagate did not reveal any information concerning pricing of its new HDDs. While the product is unique because of its form-factor and capacity, its performance is lower compared to other HDDs. It will be very interesting to see how Seagate prices its new HDD, given its pros and cons.

Related Reading

Seagate to Ship 5TB HDD in 2014 using SMR – Brief SMR Overview
Seagate Mobile HDD Specifications (1TB and 2TB) – Specifications

ioSafe Launches BDR 515 Backup and Disaster Recovery Appliance

ioSafe’s disaster-resistant storage devices are unique in the market. Yesterday, they introduced the latest member of their backup and data recovery (BDR) server lineup – the BDR 515. It is a 5-bay x86 NAS running Windows Server 2012 R2. Earlier NAS appliances from ioSafe such as the 1513+ and 1515+ were based on Synology’s DSM OS. With the BDR 515, the focus has shifted to consumers who want the familiarity and capabilities of Microsoft’s server platform.

Before going into the details of the BDR 515, it might be useful to see the conditions under which a BDR NAS unit might make sense. These appliances are usually installed in server rooms and automatically back up all the data stored on servers both locally and to the cloud. If the servers are damaged because of a major hardware outage, a natural disaster, or other emergency, BDRs can help to quickly restore the data. Thanks to the fact that BDRs store data both locally and in the cloud, they can restore data even if they are physically damaged as well. Moreover, the BDR can act as a replica of the server it is attached to and work as a backup machine.

ioSafe’s BDR 515, like their complementary NAS offerings (1515+, 1513+ and the 214), is resistant to both fire and water damage. The protection specifications are the same as before – fire with temperatures up to 1550°F for 30 minutes (in accordance with the ASTM E-119 testing standard) and submergence in 10-feet deep water for three days without any harm to data. Unlike other BDR servers, the model 515 from ioSafe protects data immediately after it is recorded on its HDDs thanks to its ability to protect data in the harshest environments. Even if the Internet connection is absent after a fire or flooding, the protection for the hard disks in the BDR 515 allows data to be restored from the device after retrieval of the appliance from the disaster site.

The ioSafe BDR 515 is based on the dual-core Intel Core i5-4570T (2.90 GHz) and is equipped with 16 GB DDR3 memory. It uses the Areca ARC-1225-8i hardware RAID controller and two Intel i210 Gigabit Ethernet controllers. The BDR 515 can be equipped with up to five 6 TB WD Red hard disk drives and store up to 30 TB of data. ioSafe’s previous flagship BDR – the 1515+ running Synology’s DSM – utilized a low power Intel Atom processor. The 515’s Core i5-4570T should help ioSafe to significantly improve performance of the solution, but, at the cost of higher power consumption.

To ensure that the BDR 515 can handle the CPU with higher TDP, ioSafe had to install a dedicated air duct to pull fresh outside air directly across the processor heat sink. In addition, the company increased the quantity of FloSafe vents for greater airflow over HDDs. The fans are also larger compared to the ones in the 1515+.

The device will only be available via ioSafe’s channel partners and its price depends on actual configuration.

Seagate Unveils 10 TB Helium-Filled Hard Disk Drive for Cloud Datacenters

Seagate Technology on Wednesday introduced its first helium-filled hard disk drive. The novelty is designed for cloud datacenters that require maximum amount of storage and enhanced reliability. By filling its HDDs with helium, Seagate can substantially increase their capacity and lower power consumption while using current magnetic recording technologies. At present, two major customers of the company are already evaluating the new hard drives. Volume shipments of the HDDs will start later.

The helium-filled Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5-inch HDD with 10 TB capacity incorporates seven perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) platters with 1.43 TB capacity each as well as 14 heads. The manufacturer claims that the new drive features an advanced caching sub-system to increase performance. In addition, the new helium-filled Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD sports the company’s PowerChoice technology, which helps to manage power consumption during idle time, as well as PowerBalance technology, which enables operators of datacenters to balance power consumption and IOPS (input/output operations per second) performance of hard drives. Seagate claims 2.5 million hours MTBF for its helium-filled HDD, which is significantly higher compared to traditional enterprise-class drives.

Typically, Seagate’s Enterprise Capacity HDDs feature 7200 revolutions per minute (RPM) spindle speed as well as special top and bottom attached motors (in a bid to reduce vibration), but the manufacturer did not confirm such details about its 10 TB helium-filled hard disk drive. Since hermetically sealed HDDs feature significantly different internal architecture, many actual specs of the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 10 TB may differ from predecessors.

The new hermetically sealed helium-filled hard drives from Seagate use either Serial ATA-6 Gb/s or SAS-12 Gb/s interfaces and can be installed into various environments. The manufacturer did not reveal sector sizes of the new HDDs, but typically modern high-capacity hard drives have 4 KB sectors and can support 512-byte sectors via emulation. Typically, enterprise-class hard drives also optionally support data security features, such as self-encryption, secure erase and so on. Unfortunately, Seagate did not reveal exact feature-set of the helium-filled 10 TB HDDs, possibly because customers are only evaluating them at the moment and commercial drives may be different from today’s.

The density of helium is one-seventh that of air, which reduces drag force acting on the spinning disk stack and lowers fluid flow forces affecting the disks and the heads. By filling hard drives with helium, makers of HDDs can install up to seven platters into one industry-standard 3.5/1-inch hard drive, reduce power consumption of HDD motors and improve accuracy of arm’s positioning. All three benefits are crucial for modern datacenters.

By expanding capacity of its top-of-the-range Enterprise Capacity 3.5-inch HDD to 10 TB (up 2 TB from 8 TB, or by 25%), Seagate increases capacity per rack to 2400 TB (up from 1920 TB), which significantly bolsters storage density in a datacenter while decreasing power consumption per terabyte. For datacenter owners such changes reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) and help to maximize their storage capabilities without expanding area of their facilities.

Seagate said last year that it had experimented with helium-filled hard disk drives for about 12 years. While the company is several generations behind HGST with its hermetically sealed commercial HDDs, the company’s helium platform should be rather robust in terms of both reliability and performance.

At present, Alibaba and Huawei, who both said that the new hard drives help them to reduce their costs, evaluate Seagate’s Enterprise Capacity 10 TB HDDs. Some other companies have also received Seagate’s new HDDs. HGST’s 10 TB helium-filled hard disk drives are already deployed by companies like Netflix, which need maximum amount of storage.

Seagate itself predicted recently that in 2016 its 8 TB hard drives would be its most popular high-capacity models. The company did not announce high-volume availability timeframe of its 10 TB HDDs, but it is unlikely that Seagate will ship a lot of such products this year. Pricing of Seagate’s Enterprise Capacity 10 TB HDD is unknown.

Mobile devices, Big Data analytics, 4K ultra-high-definition video, modern workloads and emerging devices generate tremendous amounts of data, which greatly increases storage requirements for datacenters. Since technologies like two-dimensional magnetic recording (TDMR) and heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) are not ready for commercial hard drives just not, helium-filled HDDs will gradually gain importance for companies like Alibaba or Netflix. So far, HGST has shipped over four million helium-filled hard drives and in in the recent quarters adoption of such HDDs intensified among its customers.