| hdd / hard disk drive news |
the top SSD companies in
Q4 2011
Editor:- January 20, 2012 - StorageSearch.com today published
the new 19th quarterly edition of -
the Top 20 SSD Companies
List.
As I said to a couple of people yesterday - "In an
uncertain and disruptive market like SSDs - if you're looking to shortlist
partners, suppliers and investments - there's safety in numbers."
It's a good initial filter and starting point. I've always found it
very useful and that's why I decided to share the list with readers back in
2007 when
there were only 55 companies in the SSD market. Today I talk to over 300 SSD
companies. You probably have better things to do with your time.
...read the article
HDD warranties to be cut
Editor:- December 20, 2011
- The warranties offered on many new
hard drives will be
reduced next year - according to an article in
TomsHardware.
In a duopolistic market there's no need to make claims which are any
better than they need to be. The regulators should have seen this coming.
Seagate seeks $0.5 billion from WD
Editor:- November
21, 2011 - Seagate has been
awarded $525 million in a recent arbitration decision against WD.
"We do not believe there
is any basis in law or fact for the damage award of the arbitrator,"
said
John Coyne, WD's president and CEO. "...We will vigorously
challenge the award."
HDD price hikes will help SSDs, compression and dedupe
Editor:-
November 9, 2011 - lots of people are writing about recent HDD price
escalations.
One reader in the
storage software
market pointed me towards a blog written by his company -
will
prices of hard disks reach absurd levels?
Here's what I said...
As
you may have seen our editorial view is that all hard disk storage will get
replaced by solid state in the 2016 to 2020 timeframe – so we stopped
coverage of HDD stories a few years ago, except where they exemplify the SSD
transition narrative.
This (below) is what I said to another reader
yesterday re HDD shortages.
It will mainly affect consumers –
so they may have to buy something different for Christmas.
In
reality it won't change anything in the enterprise market.
Even if 100% of HDD production stopped for 3 months – it would
encourage users to look at the utilization rates of their storage – and
dedupe,
compression and SSD would
look more attractive.
(which) SSD Makers Benefit From Thailand Flood ?
Editor:-
November 4, 2011 - a
blog
on SeekingAlpha.com written by Dana Blankenhorn - discusses
which SSD makers could benefit in the short term from HDD shortages.
Editor's
comments:- In my view Dana Blankenhorn is correct to suggest it will be
small form factor / notebook SSD makers.
3 weeks ago - when WD and
Seagate alerted the market to this potential supply problems in
hard disks - I said -
something along the lines of - "let them eat cake" - referring to
oems who may have to use SSDs instead.
I doubt whether the volume of
SSDs that switch sooner into HDD slots will make a big difference to any SSD
maker's profit in the next few months - but it could increase the urgency of
some SSD qualification programs.
The big market for
SSDs in 2012 will be
in the enterprise - where the shortage of HDDs will make absolutely no
difference - because HDDs were already on the hit list.
Marie Antoinette never said this
Editor:- October 12,
2011 - "Let them eat cake" said Marie Antoinette - on
hearing that bakers in pre-revolutionary France had run out of the right type of
flour to make bread.
If she were alive today and had shares in pure
play SSD companies (instead of a
market
tracker which oddly mixes in HDD makers too) then on hearing the
news
that severe flooding in Thailand has impacted WD's hard drive
production - which might lead some people in the HDD supply chain to fret
about where their next drives will come from - she might retort - "Let
them use SSDs instead!"
The Marie Antoinette quote isn't
strictly true. And neither is the idea that -
SSDs will directly
replace hard drives.
What is true is that WD did issue guidance
on the flooding impact today and most importantly said "The company is
gratified to report that its approximately 37,000 Thailand-based employees
are deemed safe at this time."
...Later today:- Seagate
- whose
HDD
production is also affected said - "This devastating natural disaster
has tragically taken hundreds of lives and displaced many families. At this
time, Seagate reports that all of its employees in the region are safe."
the true cost of hard drive vulnerabilities
Editor:-
August 23, 2011 - the problems caused by
sand blowing into hard drives in
the context of a desert war - is the subject of a recent blog by Mark Flournoy,
VP of Government & Defense at STEC.
Among
other things this article shows the consequences of data storage failures. It's
the best blog I've seen so far on STEC's previously anemic SSD blog site.
...read the article - I wish I had an
SSD in Iraq. See also:-
fast purge SSDs
Pushing data reliability up hard drive hill
Editor:-
July 4, 2011 - Why didn't
hard drives get more
reliable?
Enterprise users are still replacing hard drives according to cycles that have
haven't changed much since RAID
became common in the 1990s. So why didn't HDD makers do something to make their
drives better?
Error correction code inventor Phil White -
founder of ECC
Technologies has recently published a
rant
/ blog in which he describes the 25 years of rejections he's had from
leading HDD makers - and the reaons they said they didn't want to use his
patented algorithm - which he says could increase data integrity and the life
of hard drives (and maybe SSDs too.) It makes interesting reading for any other
wannabe inventors out there too. ...read
Phil White's article
But I think another reason for past
rejections might simply have been market economics.
The capacity
versus the cost of HDDs has improved so much throughout that period - and at
the same time data capacity needs have grown - maybe the user value proposition
didn't make sense.
If you (RAID user) find that all your 5 year old
drives are still working (instead of being replaced) - how much is that really
worth? By now those 5 year old drives might only represent 3% to
10% of the new storage capacity you need anyway. (The reliability
value proposition is different outside service engineer frequented zone - but I
don't want to get side-tracked into
SSD market
models here.)
Looking ahead at the future of the HDD market my own
view is that whatever the industry does with respect to reliability won't tip
the balance against
SSDs
in the enterprise.
The best bet for the future of hard drive
makers is in consumer products where fashion ranks higher up the reason to
buy list than longevity. Most people I know replace their notebook pcs, tvs
and phones not because the old ones have stopped working - but because the new
ones have lifestyle features which make them more desirable.
the missing link?
software which sits between hard drives
and SSDs
Editor:- July 1, 2011 - earlier this week I spent an
interesting hour talking to
FlashSoft's
CEO - Ted Sanford
about the company's business plans and technology.
The company
recently launched software which enables almost any SSD to act as a cache
accelerator front end for hard disk storage arrays in enterprise servers. By
automatically learning data hot spots as little as 15 minutes after being
installed - the new software speeds up SQL queries for example 4x - and
enables users to use less servers. ...read more
WD's acquisition of Hitachi GST on track for Q4
Editor:-
May 30, 2011 - Western
Digital today
announced
its proposed acquisition of Hitachi GST is
progressing through EU anti competition review processes and is anticipated to
close in the 4th quarter of 2011.
Lortu announces 20TB virtual hard drive
Editor:- May
17, 2011 -
Lortu today
unveiled the LDA-Mini - a
small form factor HDD backup appliance with upto 20TB of virtual capacity -
with internal dedupe
- with MSRP of 680 euros. |
 |
| Editor's comments:- in
my 2010 article - this
way to the Petabyte SSD - I explained that one of my assumptions was that
designers would start to put dedupe, compression and library management
features inside SSDs. Although Lortu's product is aimed at the
HDD market - it's one
step along the way to a new class of bulk storage devices. |
|
Authorized Data Recovery
comes to SSDs
Editor:- May 9, 2011 - one of the arguments for
choosing hard drives in a low capacity notebook has been that if anything
went wrong with the disk and there was no effective
backup - then the
data recovery industry
has been better able to to perform recoveries on HDDs than
SSDs.
Although
specialist flash DR companies have
reverse analyzed some
SSD controller algorithms - it's still been difficult or impossible to
recover most SSD designs without the support of the original manufacturer.
Recently
SandForce - whose
controllers are used by
about 30 SSD makers announced its first partnership with a DR company. I'm sure
that many more SSD companies who sell into the consumer market will follow this
lead.
Recoverability is less important in enterprise SSD markets
because configurations are usually designed to be fault tolerant - and the data
is replicated more frequently.
Samsung exits shrinking HDD market
Editor:- April 19, 2011 - One alternative way of looking at Seagate is as one of
the world's leading storage
market analysts - when it comes to the subject of
hard drives.
In
this unsung role Seagate today published
a
report (pdf) - which among other things includes this useful total market
size info - related to the most recent quarter.
- enterprise HDD market - 13.8 million units - (up 10% year on year)
- client HDD market - 115 million units - (down 7% year on year)
The
company also
reported
that its revenue had declined 11% year on year and that it has entered
into an agreement to buy Samsung's
HDD business for $1.375 billion.
Samsung will supply NAND flash
to Seagate's SSD products (no surprise there as Samsung is a strategic
supplier to countless SSD companies already) and Seagate will supply hard
drives for Samsung's PCs and notebooks (no surprise there either as Samsung was
probably the biggest customer of its own HDDs).
Exiting the hard drive
business is a no-brainer for Samsung who within the next 5 - 9 years must
transition its entire memory business over to SSDs when the SSD market is big
enough.
I'm not sentimental about the end of hard drives - having
written enough articles about that subject already.
Robin Harris has
written a
nice article which brings the HDD oem headcount (pun intended) into
historical context.
...Later:- April 20, 2011 - Western Digital also
reported
a year on year decline in revenue for the recent quarter (15%).
So
you may well ask - what happened to the great 2011 for HDD revenue that both the
world's biggest hard disk makers were predicting not that long ago? Here's an
explanation.
"The March quarter in the hard drive industry was
impacted by 2 significant developments - the delayed supply of industry CPUs to
PC makers and the tragic events in Japan," said John Coyne, president and
CEO. "While demand for hard drives in the quarter got off to a slow start,
it later picked up as availability of CPUs improved and as fears took hold of
component shortages related to the events in Japan."
Recovering Data from Flooded Hard Drives
Editor:-
March 13, 2011 - it's with great sadness and regret that I have to report that
the article
Recovering
Data from Drowned / Flooded Hard Drives - which includes useful tips for
protecting disks even before you send then to
data recovery companies
- has become popular in the past few days.
The Japanese people have
shown a level of discipline, organization and courageous response to their
recent disasters which the rest of the civilized world can only view with
admiration.
Link_A_Media sues Marvell re HDD data integrity IP
Editor:-
February 16, 2011
- Link_A_Media
Devices has filed a lawsuit against Marvell asserting that
Marvell has infringed on Link_A_Media's U.S. Patent No. 7,590,927 ("Soft
Output Viterbi Detector With Error Event Output").
In the complaint, Marvell is accused of willfully and deliberately
manufacturing and selling read channel products for storage devices that
infringe the '927 Patent. Link_A_Media is seeking monetary damages and an
injunction to stop Marvell from continued infringement of the company's patent.
Link_A_Media 's CEO, Hemant K. Thaparcommented
that, "Link_A_Media's pioneering work enables manufacturers of
hard disk drives to
increase the storage density of
mobile storage devices
and to lower manufacturing costs for these products. We intend to enforce and
defend the intellectual property on our work to ensure that Link_A_Media's
inventions are not unfairly exploited."
the future of data storage in the Google / online tv economy
Editor:-
January 25, 2011 -
the
future of data storage is the lofty sounding but aptly chosen title of a
new article published in the January issue of Broadcast Engineering
magazine.
It gives a clear idea of where the incremental changes you
read about in storage news
(about SSDs, HDDs, DAS vs SAN etc) will end up. ...read
the article
Seagate's HDD vs SSD paper is Nuts
Editor:- January
24, 2011 -
Seagate has
published a
point of
view document (pdf) which apparently shows that the role of hard disks
is unassailable in the notebook market - no matter what happens in the next
few years with SSDs.
It implies the SSD market will stay small.
I discuss the implications of this in an article which shows the
flaws in
Seagate's analysis of SSD market size constraints. |
|
| |
| ................................................................................................ |
|
|
| |
. |
|
|
| . |
|
|
| . |
|
|
| . |
|
|
| . |
|
|
| . |
| Nibble
- Re: Hard Disk Drives...... |
IBM invented disk storage and shipped
the first HDD in
1956.
With
a 24" diameter it stored 5M bytes.
Until the late 1990s hard
drives were commonly called "Winchester" drives - named after the city
where the original hard disk designers were based.
Hard disks use
magnetic recording media on one or more spinning disks (also called platters).
That's where the magnet allusion in our
HDD Megabyte image
comes from.
A read write head moves in a straight line along one half of the
platter similar in concept to (pre CD era) linear audio (vinyl) record
players.
The seek / access time of the disk is determined by the
rotation speed. That can take as long as 1 complete revolution of the disk.
The hard disk capacity depends on how many platters there are, whether data is
on both sides, how big they are (diameter) and the current state of the art
regarding megabytes stored per inch.
The throughput of the disk
depends on the spin speed, recording density and where the head is on the
surface of the disk. On the outer edge the data throughput is higher than on the
inner edge. Drives with multiple heads and platters can deliver more
throughput - but the added mechanical complexity and heat reduces reliability.
Over
90% of the disk drive manufacturers which
existed
in the 1990's have gone bust, or merged , or have been
acquired by other disk
companies.
The number of HDD oems shrank to a low point at the turn
of the millenium, and overall HDD market revenue was on a downward slide for
many years. That's because the cost of an average hard drive was reducing at a
faster rate than the growth of drive shipments. Improved technology and
competition was shrinking the value of the industry.
But since about
2004 new high growth markets have emerged for HDDs (both inside and outside
the traditional PC and server markets) which reversed the revenue slide.
The prospects of multi-billion dollar segments with double digit
revenue growth within the hard disk market has attracted new entrants and new
competition from products like solid
state disks and hybrid drives.
In 2008 the worldwide hard disk
market revenue grew to over $35 billion.
In 2008 the
highest capacity shipping drives were:-
- 3.5" - 1.5TB - from Seagate
- 2.5" - 500GB - from various oems
- 1.8" - 250GB - from Toshiba
| |
| . |
|
|
| . |
|
|
| . |
Hitachi
Celebrates 50 Years of Hard Disks
In April 2006 - Hitachi
published some historic reminiscences and market data to celebrate 50
years of the hard disk drive market.
Hitachi holds the privilege of
preserving the legacy and upholding the innovation heritage of the hard drive,
having acquired the IBM hard drive business in
2003. IBM invented the
hard drive in San Jose, California and brought it to market in 1956 as the RAMAC
(Random Access Method of Accounting and Control).
- Over the past 50 years, areal density - the
measurement of how many data bits can be stored on an inch of disk space - has
increased 50 million times.
- RAMAC, the first hard drive - delivered on
September 13, 1956 - stored 5 megabytes of data. Today, the highest-capacity
hard drive holds 500 gigabytes.
- In 1956, the RAMAC cost $50,000 or $10,000 per
megabyte. Today, a gigabyte of storage on a 3.5-inch hard drive can cost less
than 50 cents.
- Today, 92% of all new data created reside on
magnetic media, primarily hard
drives.
The demand for hard drives is expected to
increase multiple-fold. In a recent paper, the University of California at
Berkeley projected the worldwide data stored on magnetic media to be 99.5
exabytes in 2005, as compared to 7 exabytes in 2000. (An Exabyte = 1,024 x 1,024
x 1,024 x Gigabytes = just over 1 billion Gigabytes. - from
Megabyte's Storage
Dictionary)
Today Hitachi also announced two new 3.5" hard
drives. The Deskstar T7K500 and Deskstar 7K160 feature 7,200 RPM spin speeds and
3Gb/s SATA interfaces
for high-performance PCs, gaming systems and low duty cycle servers. The new
drives use 160GB+ per platter technology to deliver up to 500GB of storage
capacity in a one-, two- and three-disk design.
...Hitachi profile,
storage history
See
also:- - article:- Hard
Disks - on Wikipedia®
timeline:- 5 Decades of Disk
Drive Industry Firsts - on DISK/TREND
Hard Drisk Market Chronicle - Upto
1997
Hard disk
reviews (1998 to 2001) - on StorageReview.com | | |
| 2.5" HDDs more
recoverable than 3.5" |
Editor:- Did you know that
2.5" hard drives
are more recoverable than 3.5" drives? - I didn't.
A
blog written by David
Foster, General Manager of Memofix revealed this
curious fact and explained why it's not the other way round. You'd expect that
so called "enterprise" 3.5" HDDs would be better.
It
doesn't matter most of the time because in the enterprise data is protected
against small numbers of hard drive failures by
RAID and
backup. | | |
| . |
| Did
encryption kill the sanitizer market? |
Editor:-
Self-Encrypting
HDDs for Servers (pdf) - is a white paper by Seagate which makes
good reading for those interested in server disk security.
It's easy
to be wise after the event - but I see now that the rapid industry take up of
FDE (full disk encryption) may have been a factor in capping the size of the
disk sanitizers
market. I thought that market would be a lot bigger by now. | | |
| . |
The Perils of Early Hard
Drives
Editor:- there were a great many stories published in 2006
related to the 50th anniversary of the
hard disk drive.
But here's one with a different spin - about the dangers
posed by early mass storage devices. It came from my brother in law
Peter Downes.
"In 1964 I was a programmer / operator at
Pilkington Glass in St
Helens. At that time Pilkington had one of the largest commercial computer
installations in the UK. It included
ICT
computers, countless card punches and readers,
Ampex tape drives, and, I think,
CDC disk
drives.
"One night in the main computer room I witnessed the
internal cylinder of a hard drive break out of its cabinet. It was several
feet in diameter and spinning at high speed.
It bounced when it hit
the floor, then as if deciding which way to go, it hovered and raced through
the glass partition, and sped along until it hit the solid wall of the
building at which point it exploded. The computer room was sprayed with glass,
but luckily it was safety glass and I wasn't hurt.
I couldn't help
thinking that if it had come for me it would have killed me. One thing I'm not
sure about is why it bounced when it first hit the floor and only exploded when
it hit the concrete wall. There was a lot of energy in the cylinder - and it had
a horizontal spindle."
Storage History | |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
