Seagate becomes first to ship massive 8TB hard drive

[Shawn Knight]

Months after announcing the world's fastest 6TB hard drive, Seagate on Tuesday became the first in the world to ship an 8TB hard drive.

In a press release on the matter, Seagate vice president of marketing, Scott Horn, pointed out that as our world becomes more mobile, the number of devices we use to create and consume data is driving an explosive growth in unstructured data.

This places increased pressure on cloud builders to look for innovative ways to build cost-effective, high capacity storage for both private and cloud-based data centers, he added. The new 8TB solution aims to do just that with its massive amount of capacity stuffed inside a standard 3.5-inch drive.

Seagate tells us the drive is built using fewer components for increased system and staffing efficiencies while lowering power costs but unfortunately the flow of details end there. As such, we have no idea at this time how many platters are involved, the spindle speed, or whether or not it uses Seagate's Shingled Magnetic Recording technology.

Announced nearly a year ago, this technology takes advantage of blank "guard space" between individual tracks in order to increase capacity without increasing the number of platters in a drive. Because of this, some rewriting will still need to occur which could impact performance.

Seagate is shipping 8TB drives to select customers starting today with wide scale availability set for next quarter.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/57849-seagate-becomes-first-to-ship-massive-8tb-hard-drive.html

 

[Guest]

It does use SMR.

 

[misor]

It's news like this one that makes me 'wet like October'. data storage just made a leap forward.

 

[DDG4005]

Impressive! My 4TB drives are starting to feel small now

 

[Guest]

It's still a Seagate. I won't touch that with a 10 foot pole.

 

[VitalyT]

Seagate is shipping 8TB drives to select customers starting today with wide scale availability set for next quarter.

That's not true. Seagate has been shipping these drives to select customers since June - July.

 

[Seventh Reign]

It's still a Seagate. I won't touch that with a 10 foot pole.

People like you make me sick. Decades of data have proven that failure rates between Seagate and Western Digital are almost identical. In fact WD's is actually slightly higher. Stop reading NewEgg and Best Buy reviews (the majority of which are written by the competition) and do some actual research for once. A bad shipment of drives in 2012 does not make up the entire company.

 

[wastedkill]

It's still a Seagate. I won't touch that with a 10 foot pole.

Whats wrong with seagate?

Also is this in line with the 60TB hard drives by 2016? https://www.techspot.com/news/54701-western-digital-hoping-for-5x-larger-hard-drives-with-hamr.html

 

[robb213]

I really do want a large drive like this, but don't think I'll bother with them until all the manufacturers manage to get the failure rates down dramatically for 4TB+, which I don't expect for some time. Just after my nonsense with my old Vector, I need a break from drive problems

 

[Guest]

A bad shipment of drives in 2012 does not make up the entire company.

No but the unethical business tactics used to sell (and still selling) those units do. Many of us got burned by those flawed drives and found out why after much digging. I don't need any reviews. All I need to see is the brand name. I don't care if they sell the best drive of them all now. I'll never buy Seagate again. Consider it a management issue.

 

[yRaz]

A bad shipment of drives in 2012 does not make up the entire company.

No but the unethical business tactics used to sell (and still selling) those units do. Many of us got burned by those flawed drives and found out why after much digging. I don't need any reviews. All I need to see is the brand name. I don't care if they sell the best drive of them all now. I'll never buy Seagate again. Consider it a management issue.

All I need to see is "guest" and anything you say becomes invalid. If you aren't willing to put your name by what you say you lose your credibility.

 

[thelatestmodel]

People like you make me sick. Decades of data have proven that failure rates between Seagate and Western Digital are almost identical. In fact WD's is actually slightly higher.

Have to disagree. Here's an article from this very site showing that Seagate are currently the least reliable drives on the market:

https://www.techspot.com/news/55399...-least-reliable-hard-drives-respectively.html

Anecdotal evidence - I have had two Seagates fail on me in the past year. I would not touch Seagate ever again.

I know, there are some people out there that always buy Seagate and have never had one fail. But the problem is, with hard drives, they ARE reliable most of the time, so ANY data that shows a particular brand to be less reliable carries much more weight.

 

[Guest]

Years ago I bought a lot of WD harddrives and two Maxtor drives, guess which ones failed. Maxtor was bought up by Seagate, I had one hardrive of Seagate that came with my computer back then, the sound that it produced was like a plane taking off, the hard drive failed as well.
The only reliable hard drives for me are WD and Samsung, but now I don't buy Samsung hard drives anymore since Seagate bought their division as well.

 

[TheBigFatClown]

It's still a Seagate. I won't touch that with a 10 foot pole.

I have had 1 or 2 Western Digital drives fail on me in the past. I bought a 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda from NewEgg a couple of years ago and it is still going strong, knock on wood, so....

I would still buy either brand. Nothing lasts forever. I have never bought either a WD or Seagate that was DOA or died "too suddenly".

 

[captaincranky]

Have to disagree. Here's an article from this very site showing that Seagate are currently the least reliable drives on the market:.

According to "Back Blaze". But, come to think about it, who the **** is "Back Blaze"?

Anecdotally, the single platter Seagate 320GB, Barracudas, are faster and quiter than the WD "Caviar Blue" @ 250GB.

OTOH, I still have the original system drive in my 10 YO eMachines. A 160GB WD "Caviar Blue" SATA 150.

I like the WD black drives and the V-Raptors, but I'll buy anything, (except Hitachi), and stuff it in, depending on the performance expected.

As far as it goes, I've also had such rotten luck with TSST optical drives, my dislike of them has carried over to the HDD market. That junk was failing when retail replacements at BB were selling for 80 bucks a pop...

I also bought a big Seagate HDD during the "2012 bricking scandal", that still works too, (I think).

Unfortunately, I can't remember what I put it in....

 

[jhschonewille]

Years ago I bought a lot of WD harddrives and two Maxtor drives, guess which ones failed. Maxtor was bought up by Seagate, I had one hardrive of Seagate that came with my computer back then, the sound that it produced was like a plane taking off, the hard drive failed as well.
The only reliable hard drives for me are WD and Samsung, but now I don't buy Samsung hard drives anymore since Seagate bought their division as well.

Couldn't agree more, never had a Samsung drive fail, I grew out of each one, sadly seagate got their mitts on them.

 

[jhschonewille]

It's still a Seagate. I won't touch that with a 10 foot pole.

Have to agree with you, I have a stack of (4) very expensive seagate paperweights under my desk. My main WD caviar is still going strong. If/when it fails I want to give Hitachi a ... spin.

 

[jhschonewille]

Have to disagree. Here's an article from this very site showing that Seagate are currently the least reliable drives on the market:.

According to "Back Blaze". But, come to think about it, who the **** is "Back Blaze"?

Anecdotally, the single platter Seagate 320GB, Barracudas, are faster and quiter than the WD "Caviar Blue" @ 250GB.

OTOH, I still have the original system drive in my 10 YO eMachines. A 160GB WD "Caviar Blue" SATA 150.

I like the WD black drives and the V-Raptors, but I'll buy anything, (except Hitachi), and stuff it in, depending on the performance expected.

As far as it goes, I've also had such rotten luck with TSST optical drives, my dislike of them has carried over to the HDD market. That junk was failing when retail replacements at BB were selling for 80 bucks a pop...

I also bought a big Seagate HDD during the "2012 bricking scandal", that still works too, (I think).

Unfortunately, I can't remember what I put it in....

Why not Hitachi? BackBlaze rated them the most reliable.

 

[Evernessince]

It's still a Seagate. I won't touch that with a 10 foot pole.

People like you make me sick. Decades of data have proven that failure rates between Seagate and Western Digital are almost identical. In fact WD's is actually slightly higher. Stop reading NewEgg and Best Buy reviews (the majority of which are written by the competition) and do some actual research for once. A bad shipment of drives in 2012 does not make up the entire company.

Of course failure rates are going to be close, it's not a good metric to measure drive quality. Shipping, install process, ect. Too many variables, especially with delicate devices like hard drives.

Seagate IS more inconsistent than WD. I was recently in the market for hard drives and did some extensive research. It turns out that Seagate drives have a much wider range of variance than western digital. This means that the drive you get could be of good quality or bad quality, affecting everything from read/write to drive life.

"stop reading NewEgg and Best Buy reviews (the majority of which are written by the competition)"

This is a moot point considering both companies do it. Considering all the reviews across the web, editor reviews, and my over personal experience on seagate drives the only plausible conclusion is that seagate drives are not as good as WD. I've had to replace far more seagate drives for all the computers I've repaired over the last 12 years.

 

[captaincranky]

Why not Hitachi? BackBlaze rated them the most reliable.

But you probably never owned the $250.00 POS VCR by Hitachi that I did.

It would seem you missed the part of my post that went, "Who the *** is Back Blaze. Answer, nodody I know, nobody I care about, and nobody I do business with. Any more questions?

 

[jhschonewille]

Why not Hitachi? BackBlaze rated them the most reliable.

But you probably never owned the $250.00 POS VCR by Hitachi that I did.

It would seem you missed the part of my post that went, "Who the *** is Back Blaze. Answer, nodody I know, nobody I care about, and nobody I do business with. Any more questions?

OK, sorry to bother you.

 

[SNGX1275]

It would seem you missed the part of my post that went, "Who the *** is Back Blaze. Answer, nodody I know, nobody I care about, and nobody I do business with. Any more questions?

They are a cloud backup/storage company, I think they are fairly new. So they buy (or were buying) a lot of 'consumer' level drives because they were the least expensive. They buy a lot of drives apparently.

I think they probably have the most recent data that is publicly available, its been at least a year since Google's update to their somewhat well known 2009? paper.

 

[Emexrulsier]

Like people have mentioned they wont touch seagate. I doubt they are any worse that the rest. As long as they are mechanical treat it as they can and will fail.

 

[Guest]

Seventh Reign...I suggest you google ....
"Three-year, 27,000 drive study reveals the most reliable hard drive makers"

 

[SNGX1275]

They are a cloud backup/storage company, I think they are fairly new. So they buy (or were buying) a lot of 'consumer' level drives because they were the least expensive. They buy a lot of drives apparently.

I think they probably have the most recent data that is publicly available, its been at least a year since Google's update to their somewhat well known 2009? paper.

Seventh Reign...I suggest you google ....
"Three-year, 27,000 drive study reveals the most reliable hard drive makers"

Nice catch Guest. I knew Google had 2 studies, I just thought the latest release from Google was a bit older than early this year.