14 DAY TRIAL // Expert hybrid hard drive (HHD) manufacturer Seagate is apparently preparing to manufacture better HHDs than the ones we’ve already seen from the company. Test products will be shipped to various partners in the following months.
The targeted market is the enterprise domain with various applications in high-performance mobile computing and high-end desktops.
Seagate was the first company to manufacture HHDs for the PC industry, but the drives were hardly what they were supposed to be.
While Intel and Western Digital agreed that the flash to HDD capacity ratio in a hybrid drive should be 1 to 20 or higher, Seagate’s HHDs only had a very small ratio close to 1 to 200, and the performance improvement was modest.
On the other hand, the price of a Seagate HHD was not that modest at all.
Back in 2011, when Seagate acquired Samsung’s HDD division, Western Digital wanted to acquire Hitachi’s HDD unit.
In an attempt to justify their salaries and reason of being, the authorities required WD to sell to Toshiba some IP and equipment so that the Japanese 2.5” HDD maker could pose as a 3.5” HDD maker.
That was all that Toshiba was supposed to do, pretend.
In fact, Seagate and Western Digital now own over 90% of the global HDD market and exactly 100% of the global 3.5” desktop and enterprise HDD market.
Toshiba was supposed to pose as a 3.5” HDD manufacturer and the company even bragged that it would increase its HDD production by 30%.
Then, as a first move to increase production, Toshiba sold one of its HDD factories to Western Digital, and we reported that here.
After completing the sale, Toshiba said that it would start making hybrid hard drives and that it would become the dominant HHD manufacturer, as they’re the only company that makes all the necessary hardware: NAND flash, SSD controllers and hard disk drives.
Later on, we got word from Toshiba that the company doesn’t see any reason to manufacture HHDs for the profitable enterprise market like we reported here.
When the “we’re the third 3.5” HDD maker” show heated down, Toshiba made it clear that we won’t see any 3.5” HDDs or HHDs from the company during this year, and we reported that here.
Seagate, on the other hand, is reportedly getting ready to present the market with some “real” HHDs that will likely feature 10,000 RPM speeds and a much bigger SLC NAND, like HHDs are supposed to have.
Seagate’s CEO, Mr. Steven Luczo said that, "In the fall, we will be introducing our third-generation client hybrid drives, which will be in the 7mm form-factor. We will also be shipping demonstration units of our enterprise hybrid drives later this calendar year. We are encouraged by our engagements to date on this product, as several OEMs have requested exclusive access to this technology."
We’re hoping that Seagate’s next-generation HHDs will be considerably more powerful than the company’s previous attempts at working with the concept, and that Toshiba will finally decide to provide some real completion besides mere words.