Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today launched the industry's fastest and highest-performing hard drive-the Seagate Enterprise Performance 15K HDD v6. Featuring capacities up to 900 GB, the drive optimizes mission critical workloads by delivering the industry's highest data performance (up to 315 MB/s sustained transfer rate), enabling enterprise and cloud customers to move critical data where it's needed fast to ensure smooth and seamless connected experiences for business, organization and consumer users-all while lowering total cost of ownership through high reliability, security and easy data center integration.

"Seagate is once again driving innovation to meet the needs of today's data-driven economy," said John Morris, vice president of global HDD products at Seagate. "Our new Enterprise Performance 15K HDD ensures that the data is secure, available on demand and always bringing more value to our customers. With Seagate's broad portfolio of both HDDs and SSDs, we're able to cover the full range of storage solutions, delivering high performance and capacity with affordable versatility to meet the needs of today's and tomorrow's data centers."

Seagate has officially updated their FireCuda line, the solid-state supported, high-capacity hybrid drives. The new, 5th Gen models sport a thinner form-factor (2.5"), rocking the company's multi-tier cache technology as well as 1 TB SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) plates. The SMR plate's difference compared to conventional, perpendicular recording HDD technology allows these hybrid drives to increase storage density by up to 25%, by allowing newly-written magnetic tracks to partly overlap previously-written ones, reducing the amount of platter real-estate occupied.

The caveat with this technology is that the overlapping-tracks architecture may slow down the writing process, since writing to one track overwrites adjacent tracks, and requires them to be rewritten as well. However, according to Seagate, the large, multi-tier cache technology and large NAND caches are enough to offset any performance loss incurred by the SMR technology employed on these drives, and then some.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced it is now shipping in volume its 10 TB helium enterprise drives - the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD. Engineered to meet the storage needs of top cloud service providers, the Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD features the industry's lowest power and weight for maximum space efficiency at the lowest energy usage - lowering the overall total cost of ownership (TCO) of today's large scale data centers. Currently the highest capacity drives available worldwide, these innovative new products are now available to purchase direct from global distributors.

"Seagate has the most comprehensive Nearline portfolio in the industry. Each of our Nearline products - including our new flagship 10 TB helium enterprise drive shipping today - is designed to help customers take maximum advantage of top technology trends that have the highest impact on their business," said Mark Re, CTO at Seagate. "While we offer a number of impressive technology advantages, at the end of the day customers really want solutions and insights that help them better leverage the value of their data so they can offer services and capabilities unmatched by their competitors. Seagate's 10TB helium drive is designed with these market mandates front of mind."

QNAP Systems, Inc. today announced the release of the powerful Double Server TDS-16489U that integrates an application server and storage server into one chassis. Distinguishably powered by dual Intel Xeon E5 processors with up to 1TB RAM, the server-grade TDS-16489U supports Qtier Technology, 12Gb/s SAS and 10GbE/40GbE networks to provide unrivaled performance for Big Data computing and to assist enterprises in mission-critical tasks as a one-device solution for applications, storage and virtualization.

"The TDS-16489U resolves the difficulty of building virtualization environment infrastructures for businesses," said David Tsao, Product Manager of QNAP. "Its unrivaled power from its dual processors also facilitates Big Data computing to process the data deluge created by Internet of Things applications." With its server-grade hardware design, the TDS-16489U features two Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3 processors (with 4-core, 6-core and 8-core configurations), up to 1TB DDR4 2133MHz RDIMM/LRDIMM RAM (16 DIMM) and three independent SAS 12Gb/s controllers that deliver outstanding performance for data transmission and applications.

Sharkoon expands its range of docking stations and introduces the fastest QuickPort to the product family, which thanks to USB 3.1, offers a data transfer rate of up to 10 gigabits per second. The Sharkoon QuickPort USB 3.1 Type C is a compact docking station for convenient connection of a SATA hard drive to a PC or laptop. With USB 3.1 support, the QuickPort offers a transfer rate of up to 10 gigabits per second and is backwards compatible to USB 3.0 and USB 2.0. The docking station is suitable for a 2.5" HDD/SSD or a 3.5" hard drive, which slides easily into the drive bay of the QuickPort.

Installation is also simple; your operating system recognizes the QuickPort without having to install a driver. If there is no hard drive inserted, a spring-loaded flap protects the inside against dust and dirt. The internal SATA interface of the docking station supports SATA Revision 3.0 and is backwards compatible to previous SATA Revisions. A status LED on the front indicates operation and data transfer. The on/off switch is located on the back, along with the power inlet and USB the USB 3.1 Type C port for connecting to a computer. A USB 3.1 cable (Type A plug to Type C plug) and a power adapter is included, as well.

A FAST '16 paper titled "Flash Reliability in Production: The Expected and the Unexpected," by Professor Bianca Schroeder of the University of Toronto, and Raghav Lagisetty and Arif Merchant of Google, studied the reliability data from millions of SSD drive-days over a period of 6 years, to come up with some very interesting conclusions on SSD reliability. One of the study's biggest findings is that high-end (read: enterprise) SSDs with single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash memory are no more reliable than cheaper multi-level cell (MLC) drives. Besides millions of drive-hours, the group also studied 10 different models of enterprise and consumer SSDs, from three different memory types - MLC NAND, SLC NAND, and eMLC NAND.

The study also shows that RBER (raw bit error rate) is a more dependable measure of reliability than UBER (uncorrectable bit error rate) mentioned in drive specs or datasheets. RBER increases slower than expected from wearout, and isn't correlated with UBER. However, the measured/real-world UBER is higher for SSDs than HDDs. This means that while SSDs are less likely to "fail" than HDDs, they're more likely to lose portions of their data. Keep your SSDs regularly imaged. Age, rather than usage, affects reliability of SSDs. A disturbing 30-80% of SSDs in the study developed at least one bad-block, and 2-7% of the SSDs developed at least one bad chip, within the first 4 years of deployment.

Hard drive major Seagate has been hit with a class action lawsuit, accusing it of abnormally high failure rates for its 1.5 TB and 3 TB internal and external/portable hard drives. It also accuses the company of false claims over "reliability" and "dependability" in its marketing.

The lawsuit cites data aggregated by cloud solutions company Backblaze. According to this data, a 3 TB Seagate hard drive is three times as likely to fail, as a Western Digital (WD) 3 TB hard drive. It's also ten times as likely to fail as a Hitachi drive. The data appears to look at percentage failure rate, and not raw failed drive volumes, so market-share and volumes shipped by each company is not relevant. Seagate is yet to respond to the lawsuit.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today launched its first 10TB enterprise capacity hard disk drive (HDD), merging high capacity with the industry's lowest power and weight available in a 10TB drive, to meet the growing storage requirements for private and public cloud-based data centers. The Seagate Enterprise 3.5 Capacity HDD has been selected by enterprise market leaders globally for its ability to address storage demands unlike any other technology in the industry.

"Cloud-based data center storage needs are expanding faster than many current infrastructures can sustain, rendering the capacity demands of users a herculean task for cloud managers," said Mark Re, senior vice president and chief technology officer, Seagate. "Built on our years of research and development of sealed-drive technology, our new helium-based enterprise drive is designed precisely to help data-centric organizations worldwide solve the needs of their growing storage business."

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced the launch of the Seagate NAS HDD 8TB, the world's highest-capacity drive optimized for RAID, Network-Attached Storage (NAS) and server storage. These reliable, scalable drives address the ever-growing data challenges for the Small- and Medium-sized Businesses (SMB), Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) and creative professional segments.

The Seagate NAS HDD 8TB is the largest NAS optimized drive on the market. That means businesses will require fewer drives-and subsequently fewer expensive enclosures-to meet their data storage needs. The new 8TB drives are designed for tower enclosures with one to eight bays, delivering up to 64TB in a single eight-bay desktop form factor. This high storage density gives small business the high capacity and flexibility to address the data challenges on the immediate horizon while preparing for the future.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced the launch of the Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim, the world's thinnest 2TB mobile hard drive. This new product builds on the award-winning Backup Plus Slim drive, delivering a stunning new design with the same leading capacity in an even slimmer profile. The Backup Plus Ultra Slim also includes 200GB of Microsoft OneDrive cloud storage and Lyve software compatibility, so users can back up, access and share their favorite files from any device or location.

"The launch of the Backup Plus Ultra Slim builds on Seagate's rich history of award-winning innovation to give users even more capacity in an incredibly small form factor," said Tim Bucher, vice president for Seagate's Consumer Group. "Based on our breakthrough ultra-mobile hard drive technology, this new storage solution gives them a better way to manage the increase in both data volumes and number of devices."

RAIDON announced the ST2-TB dual-bay HDD enclosure with Thunderbolt, with the ability to store up to 16 TB. The ST2-TB built-in with two disk configuration modes: RAID 1 (Safe Mode), RAID 0 (Speed Mode), and JBOD (Two Independent Volumes) for you to choose according to your needs.

In this mode, you can install two disks that have different volumes and use them independently.There is no RAID configuration and without special safety or speed differences. You can also use this mode in apply with other STARDOM modules.

ADATA Technology, a leading manufacturer of highperformance DRAM modules and NAND Flash products, today launched the HM900 external hard drive, which is available in up to 6TB. The HM900 offers convenient content backup, playback, and management, contained in a highly durable product. TurboHDD technology maximizes USB 3.0 bandwidth for fast data transfers, while 256-bit AES encryption ensures robust security. In a time when large Ultra HD video and high bitrate audio are increasingly popular, spacious media-focused external drives such as the HM900 are a must for entertainment enthusiasts.

ADATA offers the self-powered HM900 in 2TB, 3TB, 4TB, and 6TB to suit different budgets and needs. All provide ample room for large multimedia files and virtually every other type of content, from documents and photos to music and Ultra HD 4K video. The HM900 boasts a dedicated one-touch backup button that allows for near instant transfer of selected files from a source device to the drive. It also supports simultaneous video recording and playback, making it eminently easy to enjoy content without missing out on other experiences. For example, users can playback a previously-recorded sports event while recording a favorite TV show in the background. The HM900 supports scheduled backup, auto backup, and multiple-device content sync, all via a user friendly interface.

The Storage Products Business Unit of Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., a committed technology leader, announces its newest enterprise performance hard disk drive (HDD) line, the AL14SE series, designed for mission critical servers and high-performance, high-availability storage systems. The AL14SE is Toshiba's latest 10,500 rotations per minute (RPM) HDD to support 12Gbit/s SAS and 512n sector length for compatibility with the latest generation host controllers and host bus adapters.

The AL14SE features a new four platter design, increasing storage capacity by 33 percent over the previous AL13SE generation models. The new AL14SE family is also updated with a 128MB data buffer for improved performance. The AL14SE family of HDDs provides 12Gbit/s dual-ported SAS support and 512n sector models in industry standard capacities of 300GB, 450GB, 600GB, 900GB and 1200GB.

Thecus today announced the addition of Seagate's 8TB Enterprise 3.5 hard drives to its compatibility list. By incorporating Seagate's 8TB HDD, Thecus NAS users will be able to maximize storage capacity while experiencing enhanced performance and reliability.

Boasting the industry's best response times for 8TB Drives, the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD leverages comprehensive advanced caching technology to reach unparalleled data transfer speeds. Other advanced technologies including PowerBalance, PowerChoice, and Raid Rebuilt enables users to customize their big data requirements and optimize TCO.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today unveiled its new portfolio of 8TB high capacity drives - the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD, Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD and Seagate Kinetic HDD. The new drives provide small- and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises with the world's highest capacity, most reliable, and highest performance storage solutions available, all optimized to match the unique storage requirements for each market segment.

"Customers today need storage solutions to support a diverse, and sometimes very specialized, set of applications and workload requirements," said Scott Horn, vice president of marketing at Seagate. "In designing our products, we look closely at the type of data being stored, performance needs, power requirements, environmental operating conditions, network topologies, uptime demand and more, to ensure our customers receive the right storage technology for the job. This thoughtful approach has enabled us to deliver the most compelling 8TB portfolio available in the industry."

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced it has achieved a major milestone in areal density with a new hard disk that can offer as much as 2 TB of capacity in a slim 7 mm package. This achievement is significant because in final product form it will give OEMs freedom to design a new generation of elegant mobile products that are extremely thin and stylish, light-weight, fast, power-efficient and cost-effective.

"In an industry first, our engineers have been able to boost areal density to 1 TB per platter in a 2.5-inch form factor, which will give OEMs the flexibility to design and build virtually any kind of mobile device they can envision, with plenty of storage to boot," said Mark Re, Seagate's chief technology officer. "Combining new mechanical firmware architectures, with state of the art heads, media and electronic design, this technology is a real game changer- providing four times more capacity than a 0.25 TB SSD at a substantially lower cost."

WD, a Western Digital company, and world leader in storage solutions, today announced the expansion of its award-winning WD Red Pro hard drive line with the release of 5 TB and 6 TB capacities. The WD Red Pro family is ideal for NAS (network attached storage) systems having up to 16 drive bays and serving businesses with more expansive storage needs than the standard WD Red drives.

Shipping now, WD Red Pro 5 and 6 TB drives leverage an enhanced design and 128 MB cache to deliver data transfer rates of 214 megabytes per second (MB/s). WD's NASware 3.0 features technology promoting data protection, high NAS performance and reliable integration. "WD is providing customers a full portfolio of high capacity NAS storage solutions (WD Red and WD Red Pro) for home, consumer and business NAS solutions," said Cindi Grace, senior vice president of WD storage technology group. "With the capacity expansion, there is now a path for customers to increase the storage density of their systems while knowing their data is protected with the most trusted and valued brand on the market."

WD, a Western Digital company and a world leader in hard drives, today announced the expansion of its award-winning WD Black line of performance hard drives up to 6 TB capacity. Shipping now, the 3.5-inch, 7200 RPM drive is the perfect solution for gamers and professionals in need of high-performance desktop systems and workstations.

WD Black hard drives combine 7200 RPM spin speed, 128 MB cache, dual stage actuator technology, SATA 6 gigabits per second (Gb/s) interface, and an integrated dual processor to deliver ultimate performance in a maximum-capacity drive. The WD Black 6TB is up to 29% faster than the previous WD Black 4TB version in maximum data rate throughput and 10% faster in PCMark Vantage.

Sharkoon expands its range of docking stations and introduces two new QuickPort models for beginners who do not want to give up comfort and functionality. The QuickPort XT Duo Clone is a docking station offering easy connection of up to two SATA hard drives via USB 3.0 to a PC or laptop. Two universal docking slots are provided for either a 2.5" or 3.5" hard drive.

The internal SATA interface of the QuickPort supports Revision 3.0 and is backward compatible with older versions. External connection is made via the provided USB 3.0 cable, power supply is through an also included power adapter. One push on the practical Clone button on the back of the docking station is enough to copy all data from one hard drive directly to an empty hard drive. The QuickPort XT Duo Clone can do this independently and does not even need to be connected to a PC.

Transcend Information, Inc., a worldwide leader in storage and multimedia products, today takes the lead to introduce the new StoreJet 35T3, its latest 3.5" external hard drive featuring the vast storage capacities up to 8TB and SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface. The black, sleek-looking StoreJet 35T3 delivers real-world transfer rates of up to 200 MB/s, offering dramatically enhanced external storage performance for today's speed-conscious users.

As technology marches forward, large files generated by modern devices such as digital cameras and camcorders can quickly fill an internal hard drive and slow the computer down. Designed for users with high-capacity requirements, the StoreJet 35T3 not only offers an enormous 8TB of storage space for large files, but also supports the USB 3.0 standard that boosts data transfer rates up to 200 MB/s, fast enough to transfer an entire 4.7 GB DVD movie in a mere 24 seconds.

The Storage Products Business Unit of Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., a committed technology leader, announces a new, high-capacity addition to the MC04 Series launched in May of last year. The 6TB version of the MC04 Series of enterprise high-capacity HDDs is designed for bulk storage systems and servers supporting cloud-based applications and scale-out workloads. With an industry standard 3.5-inch form factor, the MC04 Series delivers 7,200 revolutions per minute (RPM) performance, enabling suitable service levels for high performance cloud-based applications and storage.

Toshiba's highest capacity enterprise cloud HDD delivers a 20 percent increase over the previous generation's 5TB capacity, enabling more efficient high-density, high-growth storage for multi-petabyte rack deployments. Furthermore, the newest addition to the MC04 Series improves ROI for scale-out storage solutions with a 20 percent increase in power efficiency (TB/W) over previous generations, enabling more cost-effective delivery of cloud storage services.

For those who prefer it simple: The black Sharkoon S28 Value ATX case offers a minimalist appearance, without sacrificing functionality. The new midi-tower is available in either a S28 Value, with closed side panel, and a S28 Window, with acrylic side panel, version. The S28 also offers a variety of possibilities for the installation of components. The modular hard drive cage allows the use of extra-long graphics cards up to 41.5 cm. If equipped with the maximum amount of hard drives, the case offers space for graphics cards up to 32.5 cm in length. Thanks to its generous width of 21 cm, tower coolers with a height of up to 17 cm can be easily installed. The cable management system ensures discreet wiring of the built-in hardware.

In the front, there are already two quiet 120 mm fans behind the designed air intakes. In the back of the case a quiet 120 mm fan is pre-installed. Thus, the S28 is well prepared for the optimal cooling of high-performance components. The front panel provides two USB 3.0, two Audio and two USB 2.0 ports. If the installed mainboard does not have a USB 3.0 port, the USB 3.0 ports can also operate in USB 2.0 mode. The case features two 5.25" drive bays for the tool-free installation of optical drives. Up to three 3.5" hard drives as well as four 2.5" HDD/SDDs can be comfortably mounted using the enclosed rails. An additional 2.5" HDD/SSD can be mounted on the case bottom.

Samsung HDD, a division of Seagate Technology, today announced 4TB M3 Portable and the P3 Portable external hard drives, which are the first 4TB USB-powered single drive solutions to come in 2.5" cases in the world.

"Previously only attainable in desktop or bulky multi-drive internal designs, we can now achieve a 4TB capacity in a compact drive thanks to the latest Samsung HDD technology," said Dave Klenske, director of product line management, Samsung HDD. "By going to a single drive solution, we can power the drive through just a USB connection while fitting it into a case that is only a 1/10 of an inch thicker than our 2TB drive. They are the perfect lightweight drives for notebook computer owners who need to access media collections too large to fit on traditional internal storage options."

Helping the world harness the power of data, HGST, a Western Digital company (NASDAQ: WDC) today announced the first enterprise-class 10TB (terabyte) hard disk drive (HDD) for next-generation active archive applications. The host-managed Ultrastar Archive Ha10 SMR HDD sets a new standard in enabling the world's densest server and storage systems with unprecedented TCO levels. This industry-defining product is the result of combining two complementary technologies - HGST's second generation, field-proven HelioSeal platform and shingled magnetic recording (SMR) - to deliver unmatched storage density and power efficiency, without compromising reliability and performance predictability. With an industry-leading 10TB capacity, the Ultrastar Archive Ha10 gives customers a time-to-market capacity advantage for archival environments and applications where data is sequentially written and randomly read, such as social media, cloud storage, online backup, life sciences as well as media and entertainment.

HGST recognizes SMR as core technology necessary in driving areal density increases. By overlapping or "shingling" the data tracks on top of each other, higher areal density can be achieved within the same physical footprint. Based on feedback from customers whose data center environments demand predictable performance and control of how data is handled, HGST has implemented a host-managed SMR solution. The sequential write behavior of host-managed SMR complements active archive workloads.

Thermaltake, an industry leader in computer chassis, thermal solutions, and power supply units, has unveiled the Suppressor F51 window/non-window mid-tower chassis, the latest series to the Thermaltake case line. Featuring leading-edge sound reduction panels on all sides, expand your cooling options with removable panels for the perfect balance in silent operation and cooling performance.

The Suppressor F51 supports a range of motherboard platforms from Mini ITX to E-ATX solutions, unrivaled liquid cooling expansion and expandability for all high-end GPU solutions users. The Suppressor F51 will also be on display from June 2nd to June 6th at COMPUTEX Taipei 2015 at Taipei World Trade Center Nangang Exhibition Hall 4th floor, Booth M110.