Seagate crams 2 TB into a 7mm-thin laptop hard drive

Scorpus

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There's only a handful of laptops remaining that opt for hard drives over solid state drives, but there's no doubting that the former still offers the best storage capacity at the best price, even at smaller form factors.

Seagate has achieved even better capacity than what was previously available in their new 2.5-inch 7mm-thick mobile drives. The company claims they used industry-leading areal density technology to cram in 1 TB per platter, with a maximum of two platters per drive at this form factor delivering an impressive 2 TB of storage at the high end.

The new line of drives also features a 1 TB model, and although Seagate hasn't divulged any performance figures, these drives do weigh just under 90 grams (0.198 pounds) and consume half a watt during idle (jumping to 1.7 W during seeks). Both the 1 TB and 2 TB models come with 128 MB of cache.

As is the case with most new hard drives, Seagate is also packing in some features, including support for self-encrypting technology, FIPS 140-2, instant erasure technology, and even a random number generator.

Seagate claims these new drives will offer "one of the best $/TB and $/mm" of storage options available on the market, although the company hasn't disclosed any specifics on pricing.

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FINALLY. May have to spring for one of these if the reliability numbers are decent.
 
Which of course the reliability is going to be crap since Seagate's overall reliability has been seriously less than stellar.
 
Attention all tech writers: Please post Seagate reliability numbers in the headline. That way I can skip reading the article 'cause we all know those numbers will be ... awful.
 
Can't justify anyone getting a non-SSD in a laptop...
What is there to justify when most has a second drive bay for an option. I'm fairly certain a second SSD/HDD would be used more than an optical.
Which of course the reliability is going to be crap since Seagate's overall reliability has been seriously less than stellar.
Attention all tech writers: Please post Seagate reliability numbers in the headline. That way I can skip reading the article 'cause we all know those numbers will be ... awful.
Right, lets all ignore the problematic series and flag them all bad.
 
Having used 2.5" 2TB HDD-s for almost 3 years now, this seems hardly a news...
Maybe so, but I'm going to wager it was not 7mm. I don't know how many devices only support 7mm or thinner. I do know I have a 2.5" enclosure that only supports 7mm or thinner drives. I've actually been waiting on news such as this, at least a 1TB at 7mm.
 
I have had a Barracuda 3TB for the last four years. It works well except for its bad habit of disappearing. I have to shut down the computer completely to recover the disk. Careful with Seagate stuff then.
 
I have had a Barracuda 3TB for the last four years. It works well except for its bad habit of disappearing. I have to shut down the computer completely to recover the disk. Careful with Seagate stuff then.
Well, early Windows 7 instalations had a bad habit of losing large capacity drives upon resume from standby. If a drive wouldn't spin up fully in about 10 seconds, Windows would forget about it

There was a zip file , "you have to ask for it update" password and all, but I think it was incorporated into the general updates.
I had a 750GB WD Black that kept on disappearing. The update fixed it. Sorry I forget the number.

Then there was the 2TB WD Black which kept disappearing. That took a new SATA cable.

They apparently don't make 50 cent SATA cables like they used to...
 
Yes, it's a 7200 rpm disk. It is there after my computer wakes up. The problem happens at random, sometimes when I am backing up something, and my backup program informs me about the error.
 
Attention all tech writers: Please post Seagate reliability numbers in the headline. That way I can skip reading the article 'cause we all know those numbers will be ... awful.

Seagate, as a whole, is no less reliable than any other major HD manufacturer... There are always specific models that turn out to be busts - Seagate had one recently, but this has nothing to do with that model and there is no reason to believe that it would be any less reliable than a WD or Toshiba, or whatever...

Check out https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-stats-for-q2-2015/ which actually took a few different storage sizes and a LOT of hard drives (like over 16 thousand Seagates I believe) and found that the failure rates were all pretty low (highest % was 3% for the 4TB model, which is still pretty good).

I still stand by my opinion that getting a non-SSD for a laptop is a mistake. Even with multiple drive bays, I'd prefer a smaller second SSD... if your laptop NEEDS to have large storage, I'd suggest a portable HD (you can get 2TB for about $100 these days) - which you could then use to transfer to multiple machines later...

Your laptop should be as cool and power efficient as possible - SSDs kill HDs in both, and the extra storage shouldn't be an issue for a laptop...

I have an Alienware 18 with 3x 256GB SSDs inside - I have a blu-ray burner in the 4th slot as I occasionally use it to play movies, but I would have no issue making it another 256GB SSD...

Desktops are a different story... I have 3 mechanical HDs in my main rig, all Seagates by the way - 2 x 8TB and 1 x 6TB (The 6TB is an enterprise and runs slightly faster - the 8tb models are for redundant backups). I also have 2 SSDs, but they are for my OS and my installed programs...
 
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