Seagate gearing up to release 10 TB hard drive in 2015

After unveiling an 8 TB hard drive that is retailing for an amazing price of $260, one of the firms that is regarded as the pioneers of mechanical storage has stated that it won’t be long until consumers and enterprises will start owning 10 TB hard drives. Seagate is planning to release its 10 TB model by 2015, stating that the storage product will be priced at the same cost-effective level as its smaller capacity 8 TB counterpart. However, the company did state that it has no intentions on manufacturing helium-filled HDDs because the input required to make such products will result in the making of a very expensive hard drive, and therefore, not worthy.

However, Seagate will be utilizing the same shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology next year for the 10 TB hard drive and plans to succeed that technology with heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology. The hard drive will be made on six 1.66TB SMR platters, and Seagate openly admitted in an interview that shingled magnetic technology’s only adverse effect is that it results in a poor performing hard drive compared to other products. However, the company further commented that by using large DRAM caches on these hard drives, their poor performance will gradually be alleviated.

What is more important to see that faster mechanical hard drives; those that would exhibit more performance than Seagate’s SMR offerings will deliver performance numbers that will not be able to be viewed until and unless accurate benchmarking tests are performed and since these hard drives are already more expensive, making these would be counterproductive in Seagate’s opinion.If Seagate is able to release pricing details in a few months and if it is able to keep it in the same range at its 8 TB offering, the enterprise and consumers would be more inclined to run these in their systems than purchasing expensive ones which will only display a modicum amount of performance.