Seagate Technology (www.seagate.com) says it’s achieved a major milestone in areal density with a new hard disk that can offer as much as 2TB of capacity in a slim 7mm package.
This achievement is significant because in final product form it will give OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] the freedom to design a new generation of elegant mobile products that are extremely thin and stylish, light-weight, fast, power-efficient and cost-effective, says Mark Re, Seagate’s chief technology officer. Combining new mechanical firmware architectures, with state of the art heads, media and electronic design, this technology is a real game changer- providing four times more capacity than a 0.25TB SSD at a substantially lower cost,” he adds.
The new drive technology is the first to incorporate recording-subsystem components—head, media, preamp, channel—to achieve even greater areal densities. It weighs just 3.17 ounces, and is 25 percent lighter than the previous generation of Seagate’s mobile hard drive products. With up to 2TB of space, the drive can store more than 500,000 songs, 320,000 photos, 240 hours of high definition video or 26 hours of 4K ultra-high definition content.
While the new areal density milestone was achieved in a traditional HDD format, Seagate is also examining a hybrid format as well. A hybrid version would combine NAND flash with Seagate’s proprietary learning algorithms, to deliver supreme performance and a richer consumer experience at a much lower cost than comparable solid state drives, says Re.