HDDs
UPDATE 5/17, 6 PM: Western Digital has confirmed that the new 2.5-inch T GB HDDs uses 6 SMR platters The vast majority of laptops nowadays use solid-state drives, which is why the development of new, higher-capacity 2.5-inch hard drives has all but come to a halt. Or rather, it almost has. It seems that the 2.5-inch form factor has a bit more life left in it after all, as today Western Digital has released a slate of new external storage products based on a new, high-capacity 6 TB 2.5-inch hard drive. WD's new 6 TB spinner is being used to offer upgraded versions of the company's My Passport, Black P10, and and G-DRIVE ArmorATD portable storage products. Notably, however, WD isn't selling the bare 2.5-inch drive...
Western Digital Introduces Its First Helium-Filled HDDs for Consumer Applications
Helium-filled hard drives have a number of mechanical advantages compared to traditional HDDs, but they are also more expensive to manufacture. Western Digital subsidiary HGST introduced the world’s first...
34 by Anton Shilov on 3/1/2016Seagate 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...
29 by Anton Shilov on 2/18/2016ioSafe 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...
2 by Anton Shilov on 2/4/2016Seagate 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...
40 by Anton Shilov on 1/13/2016Seagate Introduces First 8 TB Hard Disk Drive for Consumer NAS Applications
Seagate Technology on Tuesday introduced its new breed of hard disk drives (HDDs) for network area storage (NAS) and RAID applications. The new family of NAS HDDs from Seagate...
38 by Anton Shilov on 1/12/2016Hard Disk Drives with HAMR Technology Set to Arrive in 2018
While many client devices use solid-state storage technologies nowadays, hard disk drives (HDDs) are still used by hundreds of millions of people and across virtually all datacenters worldwide. Heat-assisted...
72 by Anton Shilov on 12/24/2015Seagate: Hard Disk Drives Set to Stay Relevant for 20 Years
The very first hard disk drives (HDDs) were demonstrated by IBM back in 1956 and by the early 1980s they became the dominant storage technology for all types of...
86 by Anton Shilov on 12/18/2015Western Digital Expands HGST Helium Drive Lineup with 10TB Ultrastar He10
HGST, a Western Digital subsidiary, has been shipping hard drives sealed with helium for a couple of years now. Their helium drives have so far come in two flavors...
113 by Ganesh T S on 12/2/2015WD Red Pro 6 TB Review - High Performance NAS HDD Gets a Capacity Bump
Despite the increasing affordability of SSDs, hard drives continue to remain the storage medium of choice for applications where capacity and cost factors outweigh performance requirements. Specialty drives have...
62 by Ganesh T S on 9/7/2015Seagate Announces a Trio of 8TB Drives for Enterprise Applications
Seagate was the first hard drive vendor to launch a cost-effective 8TB hard drive. The Archive HDD v2 (ST8000AS0002) uses Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) to drive up the areal...
14 by Ganesh T S on 9/1/2015HGST Deskstar NAS 6 TB Review
The increasing affordability of SSDs has put a strain on the traditional market for hard drive vendors. However, hard drives continue to remain the storage medium of choice for...
36 by Ganesh T S on 12/23/2014Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD 6 TB Review
Hard drives continue to remain the storage medium of choice for applications where capacity and cost factors outweigh performance requirements. Vendors have also realized that enterprise hard drives are...
52 by Ganesh T S on 12/10/2014Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD: WD Red Pro Gets a Competitor
We have seen this story play out before. Western Digital delineates the hard drive market with a product aimed at a particular niche and Seagate comes in a few...
22 by Ganesh T S on 12/2/2014HGST Deskstar NAS 4 TB Review
The increasing affordability of SSDs has put a strain on the traditional market for hard drive vendors. However, new opportunities have opened up, thanks to the rapid growth in...
40 by Ganesh T S on 11/22/2014WD Red Pro Review: 4 TB Drives for NAS Systems Benchmarked
A couple of weeks back, Western Digital updated their NAS-specific drive lineup with 5 and 6 TB Red drives. In addition, 7200 RPM Red Pro models with 2 -...
62 by Ganesh T S on 8/8/20146 TB NAS Drives: WD Red, Seagate Enterprise Capacity and HGST Ultrastar He6 Face-Off
Western Digital launched the first NAS-specific 6 TB drive today. In expanding their Red portfolio, they have brought 6 TB drives suitable for 24x7 operation into the hands of...
84 by Ganesh T S on 7/21/20145TB 3.5” Enterprise HDD from Toshiba Announced
Despite the focus on immediate storage is on the solid-state drive, whenever a large backup is needed then the mechanical hard-disk drive is still reigning supreme, and the demand...
42 by Ian Cutress on 2/15/2014The WD Black2 Review: World's First 2.5" Dual-Drive
If you had asked me a few years ago, I would've said that hybrid drives will be the next big thing in the storage industry. A hybrid drive made...
100 by Kristian Vättö on 1/30/2014Western Digital Releases Black^2: 120GB SSD + 1TB HD Dual-Drive in 2.5" Form Factor
To date all the hybrid storage solutions we have seen have been rather limited. Seagate got the idea right with the Momentus XT but having only 8GB of NAND...
66 by Kristian Vättö on 11/25/2013Hardware Tricks: How to Not Fix a Crashed Hard Drive
Earlier this year, I posted a short story and video of my attempt at – and success – repairing a Gateway notebook that was suffering a Code 43 GPU...
66 by Jarred Walton on 9/13/2013