Seagate has been hyping their new HDD density-improvement technology, HAMR, for some time now. The basis of HAMR (Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording) in Seagate's ypcoiming HDDs is to increase platter density without having to resort to other solutions so as to increase HDD capacity (increased number of platters, increased footprint, etc). The company says that internal tests of 16 TB HAMR-based HDDs are going well, with expected market release to partners by 2019.

HAMR does keep up with compatibility for enterprise customers, being a drop-in upgrade for other HDD-based storage solutions - they're just higher capacity, higher-performance solutions that don't need any special treatment from deployers. The plan is to release 20 TB solutions by 2020, and a staggering 48 TB in the standard 3.5" form-factor by 2024. Seagate further states that HAMR-based drives far exceed industry-required reliability parameters, so the company is bullish on the attention its technology will garner once available to customers in general. The HAMR tech will be deployed firstly on the company's

LaCie , the premium brand from Seagate Technology (NASDAQ: STX), unveiled the high-performance LaCie Portable SSD storage solution. The compact external solid state drive offers fast and reliable performance featuring USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gb/s) technology with USB-C connector for universal compatibility.

With maximum sequential read/write speeds of 540/500MB/s, the LaCie Portable SSD is ideal for on-the-go creative professionals looking for uncompromised performance. Available in 2TB, 1TB, or 500GB capacities, this light-weight solution can transfer one hour of 4K 30fps video footage in less than one minute and store up to 65 hours of 4K 30fps video or 20,000 RAW photos2 (2TB capacity). It is also a great alternative to serve as a scratch disc -- allowing users to edit content directly off the LaCie Portable SSD, freeing up valuable workstation resources or serving as the perfect shuttle drive to quickly transfer files from capture devices on-set back to the studio.

Do you know what's better than a 10 TB HDD? A 100 TB HDD. Seagate has published a product roadmap showing the evolution of their HDDs in the next few years. According to that roadmap, we'll be able to buy a 100 TB hard drive in 2025. Other makers such as Western Digital talked about 40 TB drives in 2025 thanks to MAMR (Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording) technology, but it seems Seagate is even more optimistic, and in fact they'll use HDMR (Heated Dot Magnetic Recording), an evolution of the HAMR (Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording) technology.

Seagate expects to have 20 TB HAMR-HDDs by 2020, and from that moment on they'll continue to work on this technology to launch 36 TB HDDs by 2022, 48 TB drives before 2024 and that 100 TB units in 2025. HAMR will enable double areal density growth each 2.5 years according to Seagate. The current PMR (Perpendicular Magnetic Recording) technology could disappear in that future, and it seems HDDs will continue to be a valuable asset for those who look for the cheapest price per GB.

As of September 30, 2018 Backblaze had 99,636 spinning hard drives. Of that number, there were 1,866 boot drives and 97,770 data drives. This review looks at the quarterly and lifetime statistics for the data drive models in operation in our data centers. In addition, we'll say goodbye to the last of our 3TB drives, hello to our new 12TB HGST drives, and we'll explain how we have 584 fewer drives than last quarter, but have added over 40 petabytes of storage.

Hard Drive Reliability Statistics for Q3 2018
At the end of Q3 2018, Backblaze was monitoring 97,770 hard drives used to store data. For our evaluation, we remove from consideration those drives that were used for testing purposes and those drive models for which we did not have at least 45 drives (see why below). This leaves us with 97,600 hard drives. The table below covers what happened in Q3 2018.

Seagate Technology, a world leader in data storage solutions, today launched the industry's widest range of advanced 14 TB hard drives, enhancing the company's enterprise and specialty drive portfolio. Consisting of IronWolf and IronWolf Pro for network attached storage (NAS) applications, the BarraCuda Pro desktop drive, surveillance-optimized SkyHawk, and Exos X14 for hyperscale data centers, this purpose-built portfolio empowers customers to consume, manage and utilize digital data more effectively and efficiently while establishing new benchmarks in speed and capacity.

With this offering, Seagate continues to lead the industry in driving data storage technology toward a lower cost per terabyte through hard drive optimization, versatility of application, and unmatched capacity. Whether for personal use, creative and design computing, online gaming, or large-scale surveillance systems and hyperscale environments, Seagate drives are opening up new data management opportunities across a wide range of markets.

Expanding on its Nytro portfolio of enterprise flash products, Seagate today announced the launch of its new Nytro 1000 Series SATA SSD drives. The Seagate Nytro 1000 SATA SSD series (which includes the Nytro 1351 and Nytro 1551 SSDs) delivers ultra-fast, consistent performance for read-intensive workloads. Globally available in the fall, the Nytro SSDs is being demonstrated at this week's Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara.

The Nytro SSD series is designed to serve as the backbone of the enterprise's cloud infrastructure, making it ideal for data center managers looking to upgrade their existing systems.

At the OCP summit this week Seagate and its partners revealed new proof points showing continued progress, solid results, and customer and industry adoption of the company's advanced HAMR and Multi Actuator technologies, which will be implemented in the near future in Seagate Exos enterprise hard drives.

Today Seagate said its new MACH.2 Multi Actuator technology has enabled them to set a new hard drive speed record, demonstrating up to 480MB/s sustained throughput - the fastest ever. Seagate formally introduced its MACH.2 Multi Actuator technology yesterday, which has now been deployed in development units for customer testing prior to productization. Read below to learn more.

Seagate Technology today reported financial results for the quarter and fiscal year ended June 29, 2018. For the fourth quarter, the Company reported revenue of $2.8 billion, gross margin of 31.9%, net income of $461 million and diluted earnings per share of $1.57. On a non-GAAP basis, which excludes the net impact of certain items, Seagate reported gross margin of 32.4%, net income of $475 million and diluted earnings per share of $1.62.

During the fourth quarter, the Company generated $468 million in cash flow from operations and $372 million in free cash flow.

As of June 30, 2018 we had 100,254 spinning hard drives in Backblaze's data centers. Of that number, there were 1,989 boot drives and 98,265 data drives. This review looks at the quarterly and lifetime statistics for the data drive models in operation in our data centers. We'll also take another look at comparing enterprise and consumer drives, get a first look at our 14 TB Toshiba drives, and introduce you to two new SMART stats. Along the way, we'll share observations and insights on the data presented and we look forward to you doing the same in the comments.
Hard Drive Reliability Statistics for Q2 2018

Of the 98,265 hard drives we were monitoring at the end of Q2 2018, we removed from consideration those drives used for testing purposes and those drive models for which we did not have at least 45 drives. This leaves us with 98,184 hard drives. The table below covers just Q2 2018.

Seagate, who are making strides in both storage density and performance of traditional HDDs with their HAMR and Multi-actuator technologies aren't going to let themselves be left dry in the SSD race. To that effect, the company, via a blog post, has just announced the introduction and availability of their barracuda SSDs, available in capacities up to 2 TB (in 250 GB, 500 GB and 1 TB additional tiers).

Like most recent SATA III SSDs, the Barracuda SSDs max out the data channel with maximum sequential read and write speeds reaching 540 and 520 MB/s respectively. There's a five-year warranty on these SSDs, which is in line with industry standards, and Seagate is asking $74.99 for the 250 GB SSD; $119.99 for the 500 GB one; and $229.99 for the 1 TB capacity. The 2 TB model will be available at a later date.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in data storage solutions, today announced the new Game Drive for Xbox SSD - a flash-speed SSD storage drive designed exclusively for Xbox One - delivering fast gaming performance and convenient portability. Available in 2TB, 1TB, and 500GB capacities, the pro-level flash SSD upgrade delivers fast game loading performance to get you into the game. The officially licensed Xbox drive offers branding elements that match the Xbox One X consoles and increases the console's storage capacity to make room for all of your games and downloadable add-ons.

"The quality of production and in-game environment for today's game titles is off the charts," said Jeff Fochtman, vice president of marketing for Seagate Technology. "Seagate's Game Drive for Xbox SSD offers gamers the extra capacity for their entire library and flash-speed performance so they can jump into their games without waiting on slow menus and load times."

Seagate, a world leader in data storage solutions, and HTC VIVE, an innovation world leader in the field of smart mobile devices and virtual reality (VR), have jointly launched the SeagateⓇ VR Power Drive at the 2018 HTC New Ecosystem Conference in Shenzhen, China, helping VR device users expand their storage capacity and battery life.

Virtual reality is developing with great speed and momentum in China, and VR applications are emerging one after another in the fields of entertainment, education and healthcare, etc. According to a report jointly released by iResearch and Greenlight Insights, China will become a main VR market globally. In 2016, the VR market in China reached RMB 3.46 billion (about US$550 million). With high growth rate, the VR market in China is estimated to exceed RMB 10 billion (about US$1.6 billion) in 2018. In the next five years, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of the VR market could exceed 80 percent. Moreover, by 2021, China is forecast to become the largest VR market in the world, and the whole scale of the industry could reach RMB 79.02 billion (about US$ 12.64 billion), with the VR headset device market forecast to be RMB 29.75 billion (about US$4.76 billion). With the overall market for VR hardware expanding, the market of content, including VR games, VR films and television, as well as live streaming, are also growing rapidly, bringing more comprehensive entertainment experience to users.

Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ:STX) (the "Company" or "Seagate") today reported financial results for the quarter ended March 30, 2018. For the third quarter, the Company reported revenue of $2.8 billion, gross margin of 30.2%, net income of $381 million and diluted earnings per share of $1.31. On a non-GAAP basis, which excludes the net impact of certain items, Seagate reported gross margin of 30.8%, net income of $424 million and diluted earnings per share of $1.46.

During the third quarter, the Company generated $558 million in cash flow from operations and $489 million in free cash flow. Year to date, the Company has generated approximately $1.6 billion in cash flow from operations and approximately $1.4 billion in free cash flow. Cash and cash equivalents totaled approximately $2.9 billion at the end of the quarter. There were 287 million ordinary shares issued and outstanding as of the end of the quarter.

At the NAB 2018 conference Seagate Technology, a world leader in data storage solutions, today announced the launch of a new product, LaCie Rugged RAID Pro, and creative professional community, Collective. These announcements mark Seagate's ongoing commitment to provide innovative solutions and platforms to support the workflows of creative professionals that allow digital content to be created, stored, utilized and shared in the most creative and effective ways.

"Digital content creation is key in the media and entertainment (M&E) industry, comprising of unique moments that are the product of time and money - and often irreplaceable," said Tim Bucher, senior vice president of Seagate consumer solutions. "We have seen an exponential rise in the amount of data created and as such, it has become central to industries such as M&E. From shooting on set through to post-production, the transferring, storing and accessing of data is a pivotal part of the creative workflow. At Seagate, we're constantly looking to deliver storage solutions that allow people to unlock their full creative potential, and create truly memorable content."

Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ: STX), a world leader in data storage solutions, today unveiled its 14TB helium-based ExosTM X14 enterprise drive at the OCP U.S. Summit 2018 in San Jose, Calif. The Seagate Exos X14 delivers high performance and greater capacity for hyperscale data centers looking to efficiently and cost-effectively manage increasing amounts of data.

Enterprises across the globe face the daunting challenge of managing a massive increase in data volume as the world is expected to create 163 zettabytes of data in 2025, according to a study by analyst firm IDC and sponsored by Seagate. As the need for hyperscale and cloud storage rises to unprecedented levels, Seagate's Exos X14 hard drive is a direct response to customer demand for increased enterprise storage capacity and efficiency.

Overview
At the end of 2017 we had 93,240 spinning hard drives. Of that number, there were 1,935 boot drives and 91,305 data drives. This post looks at the hard drive statistics of the data drives we monitor. We'll review the stats for Q4 2017, all of 2017, and the lifetime statistics for all of the drives Backblaze has used in our cloud storage data centers since we started keeping track.

Hard Drive Reliability Statistics for Q4 2017
At the end of Q4 2017 Backblaze was monitoring 91,305 hard drives used to store data. For our evaluation we remove from consideration those drives which were used for testing purposes and those drive models for which we did not have at least 45 drives (read why after the chart). This leaves us with 91,243 hard drives. The table below is for the period of Q4 2017.

Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ: STX) today reported financial results for the quarter ended December 29, 2017. For the second quarter, the Company reported revenue of $2.9 billion, gross margin of 30.1%, net income of $159 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.55. On a non-GAAP basis, which excludes the net impact of certain items, Seagate reported gross margin of 30.4%, net income of $431 million and diluted earnings per share of $1.48.

During the second quarter, the Company generated $850 million in cash flow from operations and $773 million in free cash flow. Cash and cash equivalents totaled approximately $2.6 billion at the end of the quarter. There were 285 million ordinary shares issued and outstanding as of the end of the quarter.

"Achieving year-over-year revenue and profitability growth and significant cash flow generation in the December quarter reflects Seagate's solid execution and competitiveness of our storage solutions portfolio, particularly in the cloud-based environments. With our leading storage technology platforms, manufacturing and supply-chain management capabilities, Seagate is in a strong position to support ever-increasing storage demand from diverse markets and applications. Looking ahead, we will continue to focus on operational excellence and accomplishing our financial and shareholder-return objectives," said Dave Mosley, Seagate's chief executive officer.

Seagate Technology plc today announced the launch of the 5U84 high-density enclosure built with a next-generation operating system that together delivers performance, capacity and reliability. The 5U84 enclosure and firmware technology will enable businesses to store massive quantities of data in a high-availability enclosure that provides high performance access to data. What's more, Seagate Systems' operating system not only powers the high density 5U84, but dramatically improves the system's performance and reliability, increasing confidence in using high-density enclosures.

As with any technology, it is critically important to create layers of protection when it comes to data storage, particularly in markets such as video surveillance, where the integrity of the data is critical. Using next generation data protection technology, Seagate's Advanced Distributed Autonomic Protection Technology (ADAPT) can eliminate up to 95% of performance degradation during a disk drive rebuild when compared to traditional RAID solutions, meaning the 5U84 is essentially "self-healing". The technology disperses data across multiple drives, allocating more resources to rebuilds, thereby reducing the time needed, minimizing the risk of a data unavailability issue and giving the end user uninterrupted access.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in data storage solutions, today announced a range of new products at the CES 2018 conference designed to equip the world's increasingly mobile population with solutions that solve key challenges they face when creating, processing and accessing their data on-the-go.

"Our world is becoming more data-centric, connected and mobile. This means creating, transferring, storing and accessing data quickly and reliably is critical to unlocking the potential of everything - from data created in the field, to data powering self-driving cars, AI personal assistants or virtual and mixed reality experiences," said Tim Bucher, senior vice president of Seagate consumer solutions. "At Seagate, we're constantly pursuing innovative ways to address our customer needs so they can gain a competitive edge in whichever field they play."

Seagate may currently be one of the first tech companies in storage conversations due to their upcoming HAMR (Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording) technology, which should enable 20 TB HDDs by 2020. And even though HDDs are better known for their high areal density and price/storage ratio, which is only bound to increase through the usage of HAMR, Seagate knows that areal density is hardly one of the principal bottlenecks in HDD technology. The bottleneck, as it usually is, is speed.

HDDs have an old design philosophy by now, where an actuator arm moves read/writing heads in parallel across the surface of the disk - nowadays, there are usually two heads per platter (one on the upper side, and one on the underside of it). As you might image, a given head can either read or write at one point in time - and all heads move in tandem, with different heads reading or writing across the multiple spinning discs that constitute the hard drive. This, however, means that HDD reading efficiency is lost - due to how small the 1s and 0s are on HDDs, only one head can be moved to an exact data path, with all the others moving with it, spending power and increasing the load on the actuator for nary a speed gain or minimal workload.

The following was posted by Seagate Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Mark Re, in a Guest Blog Post on Backblaze: "Earlier this year Seagate announced plans to make the first hard drives using Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording, or HAMR, available by the end of 2018 in pilot volumes. Even as today's market has embraced 10TB+ drives, the need for 20TB+ drives remains imperative in the relative near term. HAMR is the Seagate research team's next major advance in hard drive technology.

HAMR is a technology that over time will enable a big increase in the amount of data that can be stored on a disk. A small laser is attached to a recording head, designed to heat a tiny spot on the disk where the data will be written. This allows a smaller bit cell to be written as either a 0 or a 1. The smaller bit cell size enables more bits to be crammed into a given surface area - increasing the areal density of data, and increasing drive capacity.

Seagate Technology plc. announced today its SkyHawk AI hard disk drive (HDD), the first drive created specifically for artificial intelligence (AI) enabled video surveillance solutions. Building on Seagate's 10-year track record of delivering surveillance optimized storage performance, SkyHawk AI provides unprecedented bandwidth and processing power to manage always-on, data-intensive workloads, while simultaneously analyzing and recording footage from multiple HD cameras.

Analytics on video surveillance hardware is growing exponentially, forecasted to increase from 27.6 million shipments in 2016 to 126 million shipments in 2021 (Cropley, 2017), as hardware manufacturers continue to include analytics sensors on network video recorders (NVRs). This will only increase as AI - particularly deep learning and machine learning applications, such as facial recognition and analyzing irregularities in behavior - become increasingly prevalent. In parallel, the need for fast video analytics will continue to rise, increasing the workload burden on NVR storage.

Hot on the heels of Western Digital's announcement of an MAMR breakthrough enabling 40 TB hard drives in the near future, rival Seagate announced a magnetic storage technology breakthrough of its own, dubbed HAMR (heat-assisted magnetic recording). This technology will enable the development of hard drives with over 20 terabytes (TB) unformatted capacity by the end of 2018, which is a faster ramp-up than WD's 2019 timeline for the first MAMR-based drives. The first Seagate HAMR-based HDDs will ship with capacities of 20 TB, with the company promising 40 TB drives by 2023, well ahead of the 2025 timeline for 40 TB drives promised by WD.

Seagate HAMR is a fundamentally different technology than Western Digital MAMR. While MAMR relies on a spin-torque oscillator to generate a microwave field that burns finer magnetized bits on the disk, thereby increasing areal densities to 40 Tb per square inch, Seagate HAMR uses an extremely fine laser to heat up the RW head, creating finer magnetized bits. The physical layer of each bit is heated and cooled within nanoseconds, and hence a HAMR RW head draws relatively lower amounts of power - up to 8W for a random-write operation (the most power-consuming operation for a drive). Seagate promises RW endurance of 2 PB.

Seagate Technology plc. today reported financial results for the quarter ended September 29, 2017. For the first quarter, the Company reported revenue of $2.6 billion, gross margin of 28.0%, net income of $181 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.62. On a non-GAAP basis, which excludes the net impact of certain items, Seagate reported gross margin of 29.0%, net income of $279 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.96.

During the first quarter, the Company generated $237 million in cash flow from operations and returned approximately $350 million to shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases. Cash and cash equivalents totaled approximately $2.3 billion at the end of the quarter. There were 289 million ordinary shares issued and outstanding as of the end of the quarter.

"The results of our performance this quarter reflect solid execution and market demand for our storage product portfolio," said Dave Mosley, Seagate's chief executive officer. "Seagate delivered record levels of exabyte shipments and generated sequential growth in revenue and profit. As the demand for storage continues to benefit from the proliferation of data, Seagate is in a strong position to grow its businesses, improve profitability and continue with its shareholder-return objectives."

Seagate Technology plc. announced today its IronWolf, IronWolf Pro and BarraCuda Pro hard drives are now available at capacities up to 12TB. Offering the highest capacity, reliability and performance in the industry among network-attached storage (NAS) and desktop HDDs, Seagate's 12TB IronWolf and BarraCuda Pro drives further extend the capabilities of the leading Seagate Guardian Series to meet the growing data needs of large enterprise business, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), and creative professionals.

Across the globe, we are experiencing a massive increase in the volume of data created, with a recent study by IDC and Seagate finding that data creation will swell to a total of 163 zettabytes (ZB) by 2025, 10x more than today. Seagate's latest portfolio of 12TB drives are designed for today's media storage needs - including augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), 4K resolution and 360-degree videos - and offer scalability for the future with increased space and speed.