LaCie, the premium brand from Seagate Technology Holdings plc, today announced the latest evolution of its popular mobile HDD storage line - LaCie Mobile Drive and LaCie Mobile Drive Secure. Trusted by design enthusiasts and creative professionals since its inception, LaCie consistently delivers iconic storage solutions in which form and function fuse into holistically enjoyable user experience.

LaCie Mobile Drive lives up to its LaCie pedigree with a design and construction built to last. Encased in an all-new innovative design by Neil Poulton, each drive features sturdy aluminium to bring strength to the enclosure. This new generation of LaCie drives includes important sustainability improvements by using post-consumer recycled (PCR) aluminium and plastic. Packaging in the box is also made from recycled cardboard.

As of March 31, 2019, Backblaze had 106,238 spinning hard drives in our cloud storage ecosystem spread across three data centers. Of that number, there were 1,913 boot drives and 104,325 data drives. This review looks at the Q1 2019 and lifetime hard drive failure rates of the data drive models currently in operation in our data centers and provides a handful of insights and observations along the way.

Hard Drive Failure Stats for Q1 2019
At the end of Q1 2019, Backblaze was using 104,325 hard drives 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 104,130 hard drives. The table below covers what happened in Q1 2019.

Intel seems to be looking to further expand its lineup of the 900P SSD, according to an official Intel document the folks at myce.com got access to. The file, a Product Change Notification (PCN), is usually used by Intel to denote revisions or new products for their manufacturing facilities. And the PCN 115990 - 00 lists increased capacities of 960 GB and 1,5 TB for their 900P SSD.

The newly listed products aren't the only things of note here, though. There have also been some label changes, and reduced voltages across the board. The retail box label will now also include the firmware version the unit ships with, which will definitely come in handy in case there is a known bad batch in these SSDs (as unlikely as that is to be).

Toshiba has announced immediate availability of their new 8 TB solution for you storage-mongers out there. The TX 300 brings an 8 TB, 7200 RPM HDD to an interesting $260 price-point. Yes, we know everyone would love to have that amount of storage even in a good, old SATA III SSD for about the same price - but now is not the time to daydream. For the foreseeable future, the best option for cheap storage in such quantities lies with our old and (somewhat) trusty platter-based storage tech.

Storage options are available at 4 TB, 5 TB, 6 TB and 8 TB with 128 MB cache. These drives feature perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR), which allows for higher areal density than traditional (now seldom used) longitudinal recording. Additional security and reliability features have been baked in on these particular models - the motors are attached to both the top and bottom of the unit and there is an increased attention to shock and vibration dampening. These drives are available now, and the 8 TB option will set you back the aforementioned $260. I'll save you from whipping up the old calculator, because at this storage capacity and pricing, price per GB stands at a mere $0.0318.

WD, a Western Digital company, and world leader in storage solutions, today announced the expansion of its award-winning WD Red line of SATA hard drives for home and small office NAS (network attached storage) systems with the release of a 5 TB and first-to-market 6 TB capacity for NAS-specific storage and the introduction of WD Red Pro hard drives that address the medium to large business NAS market. Compatibility-tested with top NAS system manufacturers and optimized for power and performance, WD Red 3.5-inch hard drives are now shipping in 1 TB to 6 TB capacities; and the new WD Red Pro 3.5-inch hard drives are available in 2 TB to 4 TB capacities.

"With the expansion and evolution of the WD Red family, WD once again is providing its loyal customers with increased capacity up to 6 TB; improved bay count support with up to 8 bays; increased product breadth with WD Red Pro; and more features with the latest generation of NASware technology," said Matt Rutledge, senior vice president and general manager, WD Storage Technology. "WD continues to listen to its customers and bring exciting innovation to the category they helped to create."

Newer Technology Inc. (NewerTech), a leading developer of Macintosh, PC, iPod, iPhone, and iPad performance upgrades and accessories announced a new 5 TB + 5 TB capacity for the Guardian MAXimus line of dual-bay, high-performance external storage solutions.

High-Performance, Multiple Interfaces
The Guardian MAXimus, available in capacities up to 5 TB + 5 TB, adds tremendous storage capacity and throughput to any Mac or PC with USB 3.0, eSATA, FireWire 800, or FireWire 400. Mission critical applications such as financial records, accounting data, medical files, business projects, and Time Machine backups are enhanced with access to data at sustained data rates up to 238 MB/s read, 245 MB/s write.

With their recent 5 TB breakthrough, Seagate Enterprise Capacity drives are among the highest-capacity drives available for enterprise-class purposes. This, along with offering impeccable reliability and power/performance standards, makes them ideal for business-critical, multi-drive server and storage environments - such as Thecus NAS systems. "Reaching the milestone of 5TB hard drive capacity is tremendous news for the storage industry. Seagate's reliability paired with Thecus's trusted technology is an undeniable edge for enterprises in need of large pools of data in energy efficient, high performance storage." - Florence Shih, Chairperson at Thecus Technology Corp.

Early, hands-on access to these high-capacity HDDs was made possible through Thecus's continued, close relationship with Seagate. After many hours of hard work with multiple devices in various environments, Thecus is happy to announce that the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5" 5TB HDD is confirmed compatible with the entire Thecus NAS line. The new capacity limit is a game changer for enterprises which require a large pool of data. For example, if a 16-bay Thecus N16000PRO is fully loaded with 5TB disks, it can by itself store up to 80TB of data. Daisy Chaining technology furthermore allows you to connect an additional 4 Thecus D16000s (each with 16 bays) to a master N16000PRO. This results in a total of 400 TB worth of storage capacity.

Today, LaCie announced the availability of 5 TB, 7200 rpm hard-drive capacities in its 5big Thunderbolt Series, 2big Thunderbolt Series and d2 Thunderbolt Series. Delivering external storage products that range from 5 TB single drive systems to 25 TB RAID solutions boosts storage capacity by 20 percent. This increase showcases the company's commitment to provide the fastest, highest capacity storage solutions on the market.

Increasingly larger file formats for film and photography have driven the demand for more storage capacity. The availability of 5 TB hard drives enables LaCie to deliver significantly more storage capacity in its same compact desktop designs. This saves professionals valuable desktop space.