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Seagate 3.0

October 30, 2009 – 11:29 am

30thSeagate is celebrating 30 years in the storage device industry.  That’s quite an achievement in one of the most dynamic and competitive industries in existence.

How did we get here?

Seagate 1.0 – the Megabyte Era

These were heady times.  Seagate was the pioneer, the first with a 5 1/4″ disk drive, just in time for the massive IBM PC ramp.

The first Seagate drive had 5 MB.  One Seagate engineer at the time was discouraged from joining the company by a colleague because he couldn’t see how anyone could need 10 MB in a disk drive.

Seagate 2.0 – The Gigabyte Era

The drive industry changed in the 90’s as drive volumes shot through the roof.  There was massive consolidation, but Seagate navigated it with massive innovation – as much in it’s automated factories as in its industry-leading drive technology.

Seagate 3.0 – The Terabyte Era

And here we are today.  Storage devices show no sign of slowing down in either what they can do or where they go.  Disk drives will continue their advance, along with new technologies like solid state drives (SSDs). Seagate is poised to be at the center of it all yet again.

It’s been a bumpy ride the past year, but what else is new?  Seagate has found a way time and time again to regroup, innovate, and execute. 

Few expected to see such strong results from Seagate  just a few short months ago.  Anyone who had taken a close look at this industry and what Seagate has achieved through it all might have changed their minds.

I’m looking forward to the Petabyte Era!

By Pete Steege | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

A walk down (disk) memory lane

October 2, 2009 – 8:41 am

idema-display

Those at IDEMA in Santa Clara in September we treated to a one-time hard drive museum, courtesy of industry veteran Jim Porter.

Check out eWeek’s slideshow of the exhibit.  Not as good as being there, but a bit of a “Gee Whiz” diversion nonetheless.

By Pete Steege | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Sweet disk drive clock

September 9, 2009 – 1:40 pm

There are a ton of disk drive clocks out there.  I like this one – sweet design, lots of fun clock face projections.

Disk drives are so affordable these days it’s easy to forget how sophisticated they are under the covers.  The Disk Drive Clock genre is a nice reminder.

By Pete Steege | Tagged , , | Comments (1)

Storage shortage destroyed the original Apollo 11 moon walk videos

July 16, 2009 – 2:34 pm

Moon VideoNASA is celebrating the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 moon walk today by releasing restored video of the historic footage broadcast around the world on July 16, 1969.

Part of the back story is very sad. Turns out that what we (those of us over 40) saw that night was a poor-quality TV broadcast translation of the actual video. The better-quality originals were stored on tapes until the early 1980’s, when they were copied over because NASA needed to reuse their tapes.

That’s right – we lost this incredible piece of history forever due to a storage shortage.  200,000 computer tapes were written over by NASA from 1981 to 1983.

Some things never change.  The situation is eerily familiar to IT managers everywhere: growing data, shrinking budgets. 

I think we’d make better choices today. But that’s hindsight. 

What are you deleting today? 

Photo source: Associated Press

By Pete Steege | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

The newest, oddest USB drive

July 14, 2009 – 8:54 am

calvin_klein_usb_sunglassesLast year it was sushi storage.  This year Calvin Klein takes the prize with these USB sunglasses. 

Now tell me what you think the next oddest USB drive will be.

By Pete Steege | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (1)

Enter the zettabyte

June 16, 2009 – 2:59 pm
Image source: Cisco

Image source: Cisco

Some say we’re now in the Terabyte Era, due to the size of today’s largest disk drives - two terabytes. 

Others say we’re in the Petabyte Era (1,000x larger than a terabyte), since that’s about how much many companies now have stored in their datacenters. 

Listening to IDC and EMC, one might think we’re in the Exabyte Era (1,000x larger than a petabyte).  They calculate the sum of all digital data on the planet to be in the hundreds of exabytes.

Cisco seems to think that it’s the Zettabyte Era (1,000x larger than an exabyte), based on the volume of worldwide IP traffic by 2013 – over half of which will be video.

To each his own. Any way you slice it, our world is filling up with data.

By the way, it would take 500 million two terabyte Barracuda LP drives to store a zettabyte of data.

Who can tell me what comes after a zettabyte? 

For extra credit, give me a reason to name an Era after it.

By Pete Steege | Also posted in Technology, Trends | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (7)

I thawed out my disk drive. Did it work?

March 16, 2009 – 11:56 am

After 100 days frozen in my ice rink, I finally thawed out my Seagate FreeAgent Go disk drive and plugged it in.  I won’t spoil the ending – watch the video to see what happened. 

Random thoughts (without giving anything away):

  • Cutting the drive out of the rink was probably the most fun I’ve had with the project all winter 
  • It took 22 hours for the block of ice to melt at room temperature
  • The project was a great obsession distraction over what turned out to be a long winter

So…what should I do next with/to/about/around a disk drive?  The crazier ideas the better. 

 Here’s the entire 100-day experiment:

By Pete Steege | Also posted in Consumer Storage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (10)

Are disk years like dog years?

March 11, 2009 – 4:28 am
Source: iGizmo.com

Source: iGizmo.com

iGizmo’s retrospective on the disk drive’s brief but frenetic history is worth a look.  The disk drive industry has done more in its fifty years than most industries accomplish in multiple centuries. 

Check out the change in cost per megabyte in just the past 30 years:

– 1980: $233
– 1985: $71
– 1990: $9
– 1995: $0.75
– 2000: $0.0118
– 2005: $0.0006

Imagine what the next five decades will bring.  Realistically, I don’t think we have the faintest idea.

But take your best shot – visions and comments welcome.

By Pete Steege | Also posted in Trends | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Three new Seagate blogs

March 5, 2009 – 11:17 am

Seagate is expanding in the blogosphere! Storage is just too big a topic for a single blog. 

If you’ve got a pulse, there’s now a Seagate blog for you:

  • I’ll keep blogging here at Storage Effect, continuing a broad conversation on storage and its place in the world.
  • Jon Van Bronkhorst and David Burks will be at The Digital Den delving into storage in our homes and lives.
  • Barb Craig and I have kicked off  Inside Storage IT focusing on…well, IT storage, with a fresh view from the “inside”.
  • Mark Wojtasiak and Lisa White have opened the doors at Storage Means Business, tackling the topic of storage for small businesses.

I hope you join our new conversations.  We sincerely want to learn from you.

By Pete Steege | Comments (1)

A Tesla Turbine from two disk drives

March 2, 2009 – 5:54 am

 tesla-turbine

Got some old drives laying around?  Instructables makes a Tesla Turbine out of two of them. 

If you’re like me and have never heard of a Tesla Turbine before, check it.  Quite cool. A bladeless turbine with 92% efficiency in converting air flow to electricity – or vice versa.   Tesla came up with the idea in 1913, but materials technology of the day prevented their adoption.

Enter the disk drive, probably the most advanced technology $50 can buy.  Disk drive motors and disks are just what the doctor – I mean Tesla – ordered.

Now what would be really cool is a Tesla Turbine disk drive that stored both data AND energy…

By Pete Steege | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

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