The Storage Effect

Size matters – in more ways than you think

Pete Steege — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:37:17 +0000

Bigger is better in the disk drive world. But you might be surprised at how much better.

Robin Harris wrote a great piece on why high capacity drives offer much more than just more space for your stuff. The bigger the drive, the faster it works. Significantly faster.

So much so that Robin believes a bigger hard drive is the best upgrade besides RAM you can give your PC.

But not as fast as SSD, right? Wrong.

According to Robin, A laptop PC with a Seagate Momentus 500GB drive will work faster with large files than an Intel X-25M G2 SSD.

That’s more speed and six times the capacity for a drive that costs less.

Sometimes it pays to read the fine print.

That’s a faster drive with 6 times the capacity for less money.

Sometimes it pays to read the fine print.

What it means to be green – from those making it happen

Pete Steege — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:53:28 +0000

I wrote last month about how being green in the storage industry goes far beyond just lowering the power consumption. Here’s a video that lets you hear it straight from the people at Seagate living and breathing our green efforts.

Sometimes the biggest impact comes from stopping, thinking, and doing things a totally new way.

How SSD will emerge from the Trough of Disillusionment

Pete Steege — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:57:28 +0000

The SSD angst continues around STEC’s recent announcement, EMC’s reduced demand forecast and the enterprise SSD market in general. Beth Parisseau interviewed Jeff Boles of Taneja Group on this. He sees a lot of hesitation from customers considering SSD product in their arrays. What’s the solution? He’s on the right track:

“What the market needs is a good round of commodization.”

Customers are not buying enterprise SSD in droves yet because the uncertainties and risks outweigh the benefits:

Will this product/controller/architecture be supported next year?
What’s the long term roadmap for this product line?
Will this vendor be around to support me in two years?
What’s a real-world annualized failure rate for this product?
How does this product stack up with alternatives?
Can I count on the same performance from this device/system as time goes by?

You might ask why more people haven’t predicted these somewhat obvious questions. I postulate that they have been relying on the maturity and consistency of hard drives for so long that it was easy to take such things for granted.

The good news is that the industry has not forgotten about these needs. Seagate for one has been investing for years in transforming Solid State Storage (SSS) technology into enterprise-ready SSD products, working with other vendors and associations to develop the necessary standards, as well as product capabilities and specifications that are predictable and dependable.

Seagate is well-qualified for this role. They have been making enterprise-class storage devices for decades. The real magic of hard drives aren’t the spinning media, but the dependable ‘total package’ that works seamlessly within dynamic storage infrastructures.

That’s why Seagate’s entry into the SSD market last month was viewed by some as a much-needed step on the way to a viable enterprise SSD market, one that mainstream customers are ready to invest in.

The death of the hard drive has been greatly exaggerated

Pete Steege — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:13:23 +0000

SSD is all the rage in the storage industry. Very exciting technology for sure and just now going Prime Time in the enterprise. But the rise of SSDs does not correlate with a fall for hard drives.

In fact, it looks like hard drives have quite a bit of life left in them.

A new study by Dr. Mark Kryder and Chang Soo Kim at Carnegie Mellon on the state of storage technology in 2020 yields some surprising findings:

A 2.5″ disk drive will likely store 14 TB for about $40
Hard drives look to remain considerably less expensive than any competing technology
Flash memory will be the next best technology, but will be battling technology limits at about that time
Two other technologies to watch: phase change random access memory (PCRAM) and spin transfer torque random access memory (STTRAM)

The question to ask is not “Which technologies will replace hard drives?”, but “Which technologies will complement hard drives?”

What are your thoughts? Agree or disagree?

Seagate 3.0

Pete Steege — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:29:37 +0000

Seagate 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!

The “evil maid” hack can’t touch self-encrypting drives

Pete Steege — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:16:41 +0000

There’s a new chink in the armor of software-based drive encryption – the Evil Maid Hack. Privacy Digest explains how it works.

Just like hacks before it (remember Cold Boot?), the Evil Maid doesn’t work on self-encrypting hard drives like those from Seagate. That’s because encryption is hard-wired into the drive and automatically locks it when power is removed. Nothing on the drive, including the bootcode, can be accessed without the user’s password.

The Evil Maid would be staring at a password entry screen, cursing away, unable to see let alone change the bootcode.

You can close this gap – in laptops, servers or storage systems – with self-encrypting versions of Seagate Momentus, Savvio, Cheetah, and Constellation drives.

A Seagate Barracuda for everyone

Pete Steege — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:23:48 +0000

With the launch of Seagate’s groundbreaking Barracuda XT, there’s now a Barracuda drive for every need. Which one’s right for you?

David Burks explains it well in this video. David blogs at The Digital Den.

Mark Wojtasiak sums it up nicely on his Storage Means Business blog.

Not only do these drives cover the needs of the market, they do it better than anyone else:

Maximum PC on the low-power Barracuda LP drive
Alien Babel Tech on the mainstream Barracuda drive

Barracuda XT is just now in the hands of reviewers. Stay tuned for 3rd party reviews on that screamer.

Seagate Barracuda crowned the king of 1 TB drives

Pete Steege — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:52:36 +0000

AlienBabelTech.com conducted an extensive review of the Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB drive and proclaimed it the best 1 TB drive available.

Why? It was the fastest drive tested, and a great value for well under $100.

Among other things, the Barracuda copied a 7 GB Crysis game folder 28 seconds faster than a 1 TB drive from another drive maker.

Seagate was able to achieve this by cramming 500GB on each platter in this 2-platter drive. That’s the best areal density available anywhere. Quite the feat!

Makes me wonder what AlienBabel will think of the new lightning-fast Barracuda XT drive with the same areal density, up to 2TB capacity and up to 64MB cache.

Seagate drives are faster with Microsoft Windows 7

Pete Steege — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 21:51:57 +0000

Microsoft may have a hit on their hands with Windows 7. If you still need convincing, here’s one more reason: Seagate disk drives go faster on Windows 7.

Seagate internal tests have shown a dramatic performance improvement for Windows 7 based PCs using Windows 7 compatible Seagate disk drives.

Why do systems with Seagate drives zoom with Windows 7?

Windows 7 is more efficient with storage resources. Using less for system boot & general OS functions leaves more for applications.
Windows 7 is more efficent with cache. That means PCs that use hard drives with larger caches (like the Barracuda XT’s 64MB cache) will run faster.

Good news: Seagate has a whole slew of Microsoft Windows 7 compatible hard drives today, many with 32MB and 64MB caches.

If you’re going to pull the trigger on Windows 7, make sure your hard drive is ready to rock too.

There’s more to being intelligent than putting it in your name

Pete Steege — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:16:19 +0000

When I’m in the cereal isle at the grocery store, I’m OK with letting marketing have its way with me. Sell me something “New!”, even if it’s really just a repackaging of the same old stuff.

But when I buy technology, I’m less tolerant of the “shiny new penny” approach. I want to know what I’m getting and what the new features will actually deliver.

Some Seagate folks did a little digging into Western Digital’s Intellipower feature available on the WD Caviar “green” drive. Their conclusion: “IntelliPower” basically means “5400 rpm” on that drive.

According to Maximum PC, the Seagate Barracuda LP is greener than the WD “green” drive. Seagate achieved this honor by thinking out of the box and designing Barracuda LP to run at 5900 rpm.

Some (like BareFeats in a recent review) say this delivers the ideal balance of power and performance:

“Of all the green drives we’ve ever tested, it provides the best compromise between low power and speed.”

There’s more to being green – or intelligent – than a name.

Image source: cerealbuzz.com