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GE Claims Holographic Media Breakthrough Capable of 500GB Discs

Paul Lilly — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 09:44:28 -0500

Hold the boat, Blu-ray, a breakthrough in optical storage technology could prove to be game changing, according to General Electric. GE today announced that its researchers have successfully demonstrated a threshold microholographic storage material they say can support 500GB of storage capacity in a standard DVD-sized disc. That breaks down to about 20 times the storage capacity of a standard Blu-ray disc and is equivalent to 100 regular DVDs, the company says.

"GE’s breakthrough is a huge step toward bringing our next generation holographic storage technology to the everyday consumer," said Brian Lawrence, who leads GE’s Holographic Storage program. "Because GE’s micro-holographic discs could essentially be read and played using similar optics to those found in standard Blu-ray players, our technology will pave the way for cost-effective, robust and reliable holographic drives that could be in every home."

GE's holographic storage technology makes use of the entire volume of the disc material rather than just the surface. Three-dimensional patterns represent bits of information, a process GE has been working on for over six years but has only just now turned a corner with the latest breakthrough.

Getting the Lowdown on Seagate and Maxtor Firmware Fixes

Mark Edward Soper — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:24:40 -0600

As our own Paul Lilly's been telling us recently, many Seagate hard disks have been afflicted by firmware woes. Unfortunately, Seagate's first attempt to fix the problem wound up turning working drives into high-tech bricks.

As it turns out, both Seagate and Maxtor-brand SATA drives can be affected by firmware problems. So, how can you find out exactly which models may be on the naughty list and when Seagate has a firmware fix that's ready for prime time? Here's how.

To determine if you have a drive that's affected, you need to know the drive's model number, firmware revision, and serial number. Seagate offers the free Drive Detect utility, which displays this information.

You can also determine the drive's model number by opening Device Manager in Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7, and expanding the Disk Drives category. To view the firmware revision, open the Details tab (if present) and select Hardware IDs from the pull-down menu. The firmware revision is listed thus (Windows 7 Beta shown, Windows XP and Vista are similar):

The serial number is listed on the drive's faceplace, or you can find it on the original box.

Once you know this information, open Seagate KB article 207931 and look up your drive. The following families of drives are affected:

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 SATA(160GB, 320GB, 500GB, 640GB, 750GB, 1TB, 1.5TB capacities)
Seagate Barracuda ES.2 SATA (250GB, 500GB, 750GB, 1TB)
Maxtor DiamondMax 22 SATA (160GB, 320GB, 500GB, 750GB, 1TB capacities)

See the KB article for specific model numbers.

To find out which firmware revisions need to be updated, and to be notified when a working update is available, click the link for your drive family. When recommended firmware is available, the download link will be posted. As an alternative to revisiting the drive family's page until the firmware update is posted, click the Subscribe icon and enter your email address. Seagate will send you an email when the page is updated.

In the meantime, follow the links on Paul Lilly's report on firmware problems to see how other users are dealing with the problem - and, back up your drives!

Western Digital to Break 2TB Drive Barrier This Week

Mark Edward Soper — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 08:44:14 -0600

Tom's Hardware reports that Western Digital will be first to market with a 2TB drive. The WD20EADS is a part of WD's GreenPower series, and uses four 500GB platters. Other specs include 32MB of cache and a seek time of 8.9ms.

Although Tom's Hardware reports that the drive will run at 5400RPM or 7200RPM, you should take the claim of 7200RPM with a grain of salt until we get our hands on actual hardware for testing. As this analysis from SilentPC on the first GreenPower drive indicates, GreenPower drives normally run at the slower speed.

How much will the first 2TB drive set you back? Around $210-240, rumors say, but we'll all know for sure when the drive hits retail shelves later this week. Will you be lining up for the first 2TB drive, or would you rather have a couple of 1TB drives? Hit Comment and sound off.

Top Seagate Honchos Resign

Pulkit Chandna — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 08:21:25 -0600

The world’s largest manufacturer of hard-disk drives took everyone by surprise on Monday when it announced that it had replaced two of its topmost executives, CEO William Watkins and COO Dave Wickersham.

Chairman Stephen Luczo, who was CEO prior to Watkins’ appointment to the post, is the new CEO. As for Wickersham’s replacement, Seagate’s executive vice president and CTO Robert Whitmore will be stepping into his shoes.

The bad news doesn’t stop there: the company has announced that it is going to relieve 800 of its US-based employees from their duties. Furthermore, the company had lowered its fourth-quarter guidance sometime back.

Image Credit: Seagate

Seagate Stores More in Less Space with New 1TB Drive

Mark Edward Soper — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:28:40 -0600

One-Terabyte drives are no longer unusual, but until now, drive vendors have needed three or more platters to hit the magic 1TB goal. Not any more.

Seagate is now shipping the first 1TB hard disk to get the job done with just two platters: the Barracuda 7200.12. It jams 320 Gigabits of storage per square inch into each platter to achieve its 500GB per platter capacity. It uses a 3Gbps SATA interface and a 32MB cache to move your data around.

The drive is also available in 750GB (32MB cache) and 500GB (16MB cache) capacities. No word on official pricing yet on the 1TB big guy, but some websites are showing the 500GB model selling for about the same price as its predecessor, the Barracuda 7200.11 (32MB cache).

What do you think about getting the same capacity with fewer platters? Will the shorter warranty period for Seagate's new OEM drives prevent you from upgrading? Hit Comment and sound off.

Seagate to Cut Bare Drive Warranties in January 2009

Mark Edward Soper — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 16:19:39 -0600

Bare (aka "OEM") hard disk drives have always been good deals for tech-savvy shoppers (aka the typical Maximum PC reader) - buy a drive in an anti-static bag, provide your own mounting screws, download a disk management utility from the vendor's website, and you can save a lot of greenbacks, without a sacrifice in warranty coverage.

That's about to change. Channel Register reports that Seagate's bare drives for desktop and laptop computers are about to take a 2-year cut in warranty coverage. Starting January 3, 2009, bare drives will have 3-year limited warranties, compared to the current 5-year limited warranty. Seagate says that they'll use the ship-to-dealers date of January 3, 2009 and beyond to calculate warranty terms, but I'd recommend holding on to your sales receipt, especially if you're buying a last-minute Christmas gift or grabbing an after-Christmas sale.

Why did Seagate make this change? According to its Bare Drive Warranty FAQ page, Seagate answers the question "Why is this change being made?' thus:

We have identified the opportunity to offer our customers warranty terms that we believe are in line with industry standard warranty offerings, and that better align to the requirements of our partners and customers.

How does Seagate's new, shorter limited warranty line up with its competitors? Western Digital's Caviar Blue and Caviar Green desktop drives and Scorpio Blue notebook drives in bulk (aka OEM) or retail pack also have 3-year limited warranties, but the higher-performance Caviar Black and Scorpio Black drives have 5-year limited warranties. Most Hitachi and Samsung hard disk drives also have 3-year limited warranties. It looks as if Seagate's claim to be bringing its bare drive limited warranties into line with the industry is justified.

So, Seagate fans, how do you feel about this change? Are you going to lock in a 5-year limited warranty by buying now, or think about alternatives? Hit Comment and tell us what you think.

How Reliable is That SSD? Seagate and JEDEC Work to Establish Standards

Mark Edward Soper — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 22:45:40 -0500

SSDs are the hottest trend in storage, but how long will an SSD last? Right now,there's no industry standard for longevity or reliability. However, Cnet reports that Seagate and JEDEC are working together to establish a standards-based method for determining those factors.

Seagate isn't alone in working with JEDEC, the standards body responsible for standards in the solid-state industry. Earlier this year, X-bit Labs reported that JEDEC's JC-64.8 committee, which is responsible for developing SSD standards for embedded and removable storage, is being co-chaired by Micron Technologies and Seagate.

Micron brings its experience in memory technologies, while Seagate brings its experience in drive reliability to the endeavor. As Cnet reports:

Seagate says it can tap into the decades of expertise it has in error correction. "Some of the skills we've picked up along the way, to deal with imperfect media, has applicability to dealing with imperfect media on NAND."

Seagate's own SSDs won't hit the market until 2009, but hopefully its work with JEDEC to set standards for reliability will help make all SSDs more reliable.

So, what do you think? Will Seagate's presence on the JEDEC committee responsible for SSD standards make this latecomer to SSDs the one to trust when product finally hits the street? Or, are you ready to use SSDs right now? Hit Comment and sound off.

SSDs Replacing Hard Disks? Not Anytime Soon (and Here's Why)

Mark Edward Soper — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:58:03 -0500

While SSDs are getting plenty of attention from us (and everyone else) these days, it's way too early to shovel the dirt over the classic spinning-disk hard disk drive technology, eWeek suggests. You already know a couple of reasons: capacity and price per GB.

While 2.5-inch drives from Western Digital and Seagate broke the 500GB barrier last week, the biggest SSDs on the portable market are the 128GB Samsung drives and the forthcoming 160GB SSDs from Intel. SSDs don't come cheap, either: expect to pay $500-600 more for a laptop with an SSD onboard compared with a standard hard disk.

However, even if you can afford to give up some storage capaciy and a lot more cash, there are other reasons to think twice before turning your existing hard disk drive into a paperweight. At last week's DiskCon 2008 storage conference, experts cited by eWeek pointed out that NAND flash memory, the most common type of flash memory in use today, drops in performance with use, and that data retention is much shorter than with traditional disk drives.

So who's really excited about SSDs? Corporate data centers. In one case study described at DiskCon, a data center replaced hard disks with SSDs. The installation used one SSD for read, the other for write, and realized a 10x improvement in read/write speed and 5x less power consumption.

So, how do you feel about SSDs? Are you ready to pony up the extra dough and trade off some capacity to give SSDs a try today, or are you waiting until SSDs' price per GB, capacity and long-term behavior more closely mirror what hard disks provide today? Hit the Comments button and sound off.

Illustration adapted from Wikimedia under terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 license.