Phison Electronics Corp., a global leader in NAND flash controller and storage solutions, today announced the launch of its X1 controller based solid state drive (SSD) platform that delivers the industry's most advanced enterprise SSD solution. Engineered with Phison's technology to meet the evolving demands of faster and smarter global data-center infrastructures, the X1 SSD platform was designed in partnership with Seagate Technology Holdings plc, a world leader in mass-data storage infrastructure solutions. The X1 SSD customizable platform offers more computing with less energy consumption. With a cost-effective solution that eliminates bottlenecks and improves quality of service, the X1 offers more than a 30 percent increase in data reads than existing market competitors for the same power used.

"We combined Seagate's proprietary data management and customer integration capabilities with Phison's cutting-edge technology to create highly customized SSDs that meet the ever-evolving needs of the enterprise storage market," said Sai Varanasi, senior vice president of product and business marketing at Seagate Technology. "Seagate is excited to partner with Phison on developing advanced SSD technology to provide the industry with increased density, higher performance and power efficiency for all mass capacity storage providers."

Seagate Technology Holdings plc (NASDAQ: STX) (the "Company" or "Seagate") today reported financial results for its fourth quarter and fiscal year ended July 1, 2022. "Our June quarter results reflect stable mass capacity storage demand, offset by the impacts of Covid restrictive measures in Asia and weakening global economic conditions on our other end markets. These impacts were most pronounced in our consumer facing Legacy markets," said Dave Mosley, Seagate's chief executive officer.

"The confluence of macro-related challenges is continuing into the September quarter. In this environment, we are reducing our production plans to maintain supply discipline as our customers manage through macro uncertainty and on-going non-HDD component shortages, and we are diligently managing expenses to protect profitability. Looking further ahead, I remain confident that the multiple secular growth trends fueling demand for data and mass capacity storage solutions remain intact. Seagate is well positioned for macro recovery with a strong product roadmap, deep customer relationships and proven track record for disciplined execution."

With only three major players left in the hard disk drive market-Seagate, Toshiba and WDC-the shipment of hard drives ought to be fairly stable, but demand is down across all manufacturers by anything from close to 30 percent to around 40 percent in the case of Toshiba. According to data from Trendfocus that was posted by Storage Newsletter, demand is down across all market segments or at best case flat compared to last year. Nearline enterprise drives remained flat at around 19 million units compared to last year, but performance enterprise storage is down to around 2.5 million units for the last quarter.

On the desktop and consumer electronics side of things, things are even more dire, with both 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch drive shipments dropping by 30 and 40 percent respectively. Around 13 million 3.5-inch hard drives and 11 million 2.5-inch drives were still shipped in Q2, but with lower demand for computers and more and more computers moving to SSDs, hard drives have been relegated to backup duties when it comes to most consumer purchases. Seagate was the company least affected by the drop in demand, but is still seeing close to a 30 percent drop in demand, with WDC second at over 30 percent and Toshiba, as mentioned, by maybe as much as 40 percent, which doesn't bode well for the company, as it's the smallest manufacturer of hard drives.

Today, Seagate celebrates Star Wars Day with the introduction of three collectible Hard Disk Drives (HDD) inspired by Boba Fett, Grogu, and The Mandalorian. Released on the fan holiday playing off of the popular Star Wars quote "May the Force be with you," the newest additions to the company's line of licensed special edition storage devices bring a tangible piece of the galaxy to the hands of collectors and tech enthusiasts.

"We are thrilled to announce the latest release in our ongoing collaboration with Lucasfilm, bringing three fresh and iconic designs to gamers and Star Wars fans," said Jeff Fochtman, senior vice president of business and marketing at Seagate Technology. "From the designs to the functionality of the drives, this release brings a force to the battle stations of Star Wars enthusiasts."

Seagate Technology Holdings plc (NASDAQ: STX) (the "Company" or "Seagate") today reported financial results for its fiscal third quarter ended April 1, 2022. "Seagate's March quarter financial results were consistent with our revised outlook, with record nearline product revenue driven by cloud customers partially offsetting multiple macro related headwinds that impacted other end markets, particularly video and image applications, and pressured profitability," said Dave Mosley, Seagate's chief executive officer.

"Our focus is on mitigating these external challenges through ongoing expense discipline, new pricing strategies and operational efficiencies. We are also continuing to execute our strong product roadmap to address customer demand for cost-efficient, mass capacity solutions. In the March quarter, we began the volume ramp of our 20-plus terabyte products, which, combined with continued healthy cloud demand, support our outlook for double-digit fiscal year revenue growth."

TerraMaster, a professional brand that specializes in providing innovative storage products for home, businesses and enterprises, introduces the U4-423 and U8-423 rackmount storage servers designed for small- and medium-sized businesses. Both the U4-423 4-bay and U8-423 8-bay storage servers are equipped with a Jasper Lake Intel Celeron quad-core processor and two 2.5 GbE interfaces that support Link Aggregation providing a network bandwidth of up to 5 Gbps.

The TerraMaster U4-423 and U8-423 deliver up to 283 MB/s transmission speed, an ideal storage solution for businesses demanding high-performance storage at a very affordable price. The U4-423 and U8-423 also feature comprehensive backup solutions and flexible configurations - supporting a wide selection of RAID types.

Seagate Technology Holdings plc, a world leader in mass-data storage infrastructure solutions, and Phison Electronics Corp., a global leader in NAND flash controller and storage solutions, announced today plans to expand their SSD portfolio of next-gen high-performance, high-density enterprise NVMe SSDs. The new SSDs will help enterprises lower total cost ownership (TCO) through increased storage density, lower power consumption, and higher performance. The companies also announced that they have entered a long-term partnership that will strengthen the development cycle and distribution of enterprise-class SSDs.

Seagate and Phison have collaborated on Seagate's mainstream SATA SSD products since 2017. That close cooperation has continued through the company's performance-leading line of FireCuda consumer gaming NVMe PCIe Gen4 x4 SSDs and the world's first purpose-built NAS NVMe SSDs. The partnership will now focus on meeting the evolving global enterprise demand for higher density, faster, and smarter storage infrastructure needs that complement HDD storage to enable comprehensive enterprise applications such as hyperscale data center, high-performance computing and AI.

AI-enabled video imaging and analytics systems require support for heavy workloads that process and analyze multiple streams and thousands of hours of video data. Today during the ISC West trade show in Las Vegas, Nev., Seagate Technology Holdings plc, a world leader in mass-data storage infrastructure solutions, launched the new SkyHawk AI 20 TB hard disk drive (HDD). The mass-capacity HDD adds to the company's leading line of video imaging and analytics (VIA) devices.

Purposely designed for network video recorders (NVRs) enabled with AI for edge security applications, Seagate's SkyHawk AI 20 TB HDD intelligently adapts to the scale of the users' AI environment, supporting up to 64 HD video streams and 32 AI streams. With this capability to support scalable AI workloads, SkyHawk AI meets the growing needs of advanced VIA systems to analyze and record video footage while simultaneously supporting GPU analytics.

As developers create compelling PlayStation 5 (PS5 ) and PlayStation 4 (PS4 ) games, players are building up their game libraries and eagerly searching for high-capacity add-on storage options. Today, Seagate (NASDAQ: STX) expands its storage capacity for PS4 and PS5 consoles with our officially licensed external Game Drive—featuring 2 TB and 4 TB capacities. Leveling up the company's line of PlayStation storage for gamers, the new external hard drive offers the ultimate game vault for PS5 and PS4 storage and delivers the ability to play PS4 games directly from the drive.

Specifically designed and optimized with firmware to work with PS4 and PS5 consoles, these drives are lightweight and offer plug-and-play installation in under two minutes with no tools required—so players can jump into action. Connected and powered with high-speed USB 3.2 Gen 1 (USB 3.0), Seagate's add-on storage options for PlayStation consoles do not need a separate power cord, making it easy for players to play from anywhere.

Backblaze, a cloud storage provider has recently released their latest annual report on the performance of their 202,759 hard disks in operation. The company operates drives of various capacities and ages from Seagate, Toshiba, HGST, and WDC monitoring each models annualized failure rate (AFR). The latest report shows that the AFR for all drives in operation rose to 1.01% in 2021 up from 0.93% in 2020 but significantly below the 1.83% reported in 2019. The larger capacity newer drives are primarily responsible for this figure with them accounting for 69% of total active drives but only 57% of drive failures.

The most reliable drive operated by Backblaze remains the 6 TB Seagate ST6000DX000 with an AFR of just 0.11% while having an average age of 80.4 months. The least reliable drive is also from Seagate with the 14 TB ST14000NM0138 having an AFR of 4.66% in Q4 2021 down from 6.29% in Q3 2021. While these statistics cannot be used to reliably judge the quality of drives from any particular manufacturer they serve as a good reference for general trends in hard drive reliability.

Seagate Technology Holdings plc (NASDAQ: STX) today reported financial results for its fiscal second quarter ended December 31, 2021. "Calendar 2021 was an outstanding year for Seagate. Compared with the prior calendar year, we grew revenue by 18% and more importantly, delivered free cash flow growth of 39%, which we are deploying effectively into our long-standing capital returns program," said Dave Mosley, Seagate's chief executive officer.

"The calendar year was capped by strong December quarter performance including our highest revenue level in over 6-years, supported by cloud data center demand for our high capacity nearline products. We continue to execute amid a very dynamic business environment. Barring any significant additional macro disruptions, we expect to build on our 2021 performance this calendar year and beyond as favorable demand trends support revenue expansion consistent with our long-term financial model range of 3-to-6% growth."

Managing massive datasets is excessively complex and costly. Today, Seagate Technology Holdings plc, a world leader in mass-data storage infrastructure solutions, announced the new Exos Application Platform (AP) with a new controller featuring 2nd Gen AMD EPYC processors. The efficient, scalable, affordable end-to-end compute and storage platform delivers integrated compute and storage in a single enclosure optimizing rack space utilization, power efficiency, heat dissipation, and storage density.

The need for advanced storage solutions continues to rise to unprecedented levels with the ever-increasing growth in data generation. According to a report commissioned by Seagate and conducted by the research firm IDC, Rethink Data, enterprise data is expected to grow at an average rate of 42.2% over the next two years. The survey, which was conducted by IDC, also found that only 32% of data available to enterprises is put to work. The remaining 68% is unleveraged.

Marvell today announced that it will ship its 5 billionth hard disk drive (HDD) controller next month, marking a significant milestone in the company's 25 years of delivering data storage solutions. This achievement is a testament to the longevity of Marvell's HDD business and underscores the company's ongoing commitment to investing in and developing cutting-edge Bravera HDD products and IP to address the ever-increasing need for greater storage capacity.

The ongoing digital transformation is driving the adoption of cloud services, digital payments, artificial intelligence, and 5G, requiring higher capacity data storage. As a result, cloud data centers are looking for HDD storage to meet the growing zettabyte demand. Marvell's comprehensive suite of Bravera HDD controller and preamplifier solutions leverage the company's IP and process excellence including over 1,500 HDD-related patents and 18 generations of Read Channel IP. With its advanced architecture built on best-in-class areal density, data reliability, and power consumption, Marvell is enabling the growth of mass storage applications from the edge to the cloud.

"Reaching our 5 billionth HDD controller shipment is a huge accomplishment and we'd like to take a moment to thank our longstanding customers and partners for their trust and collaboration over many years. We celebrate this milestone alongside them," said Dan Christman, Executive Vice President, Storage Group at Marvell. "We remain deeply committed to the HDD market and will continue to invest in leading-edge Bravera technologies that advance the next generation of cloud data storage infrastructure."

Data drives today's most innovative technology and business breakthroughs. Maximizing the value of an organization's data is dependent on the ability to store, access, and activate as much data as possible. Today, Seagate Technology Holdings plc, a world leader in mass-data storage infrastructure solutions, launched the new Exos X20 20 TB and IronWolf Pro 20 TB conventional magnetic recording (CMR)-based hard disk drives (HDDs), increasing mass-capacity data storage capabilities.

Seagate's Exos X20 enterprise HDD is designed for maximum storage capacity and the highest rack-space efficiency. Built with cloud storage in mind, the 20 TB Exos X20 delivers performance for hyperscale data centers and massive scale-out applications. With low latency of 4.16 ms and repeatable response times, Exos X20 provides enhanced caching that performs up to three times better than solutions that only utilize read or write caching. Exos X20 also delivers an increased sustained data rate (SDR) of up to 285 MB/s.

Back in June, NVM Express, Inc announced the NVMe 2.0 specification, which included support for mechanical drives, also known as hard disk drives. Seagate has now demoed the first implementation of NVMe 2.0 on a HDD and is targeting market availability sometime in 2024. You might wonder why anyone would want an NVMe equipped hard drive and the short answer is that it's intended for the server space.

One of the key reasons that Seagate is even considering this, is because of its multi-actuator drives, which the company is expecting to surpass the interface speed of 12 Gbps SAS in the future. In addition to this, it makes sense having a single storage interface on servers, which allows for a mixed storage drive environment, where some drive bays can be fitted with SSDs and others with NVMe based hard drives. Seagate is planning to sample key customers with early drives in September 2022 and final drives will be backwards compatible with SATA and SAS.

Seagate Technology Holdings plc today introduced the new family of Star Wars Beskar Ingot Drives, the first release in a collaboration to bring designs inspired by the Star Wars franchise to its line of PC gaming storage devices, taking gamers' battle stations to the next level. The first release in the collaboration celebrates the legends of the Star Wars Mandalorian galaxy. These drives bring the iconic Star Wars "precious metal" aesthetic to the FireCuda line-up. The special edition designs will be available in M.2 NVMe, 2.5-inch SATA, and external HDD formats. Each drive resembles an ingot of Beskar, including its Imperial stamp featured prominently in the series, making these drives the ultimate collectible for Star Wars fans.

"We are thrilled to bring unique, iconic designs from one of the world's most popular franchises to the forefront of every gamer's battle station," said Jeff Fochtman, Senior Vice President of Business and Marketing at Seagate Technology. "This collaboration appeals to global audiences including gamers, PC builders, and Star Wars enthusiasts alike."

More than ever, today's Xbox fans needs more storage space to keep their console games easily accessible without sacrificing performance. Today, Seagate Technology plc, officially added 512 GB and 2 TB capacity options to its Storage Expansion Card for Xbox Series X|S line up. Just in time for the holidays, players can now choose from 512 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB external storage capacities for a streamlined gaming experience replicating the speed and performance of their Xbox Series X|S console's internal storage.

With a sleek design exclusively designed for Xbox, the Seagate Storage Expansion Card for Xbox Series X|S is the only external storage device that enables users to leverage the full performance of the Xbox Velocity Architecture when playing games that have been optimized for the next generation of Xbox consoles. With the added capacities, more Xbox fans can collect and play new and legacy games directly from the storage card without sacrificing graphics, speed, load times, or frame rates. The Seagate Storage Expansion Card for Xbox Series X|S is backwards compatible with games from all four generations of Xbox, including Xbox One, Xbox 360, and original Xbox. It includes a three-year limited warranty, so players have peace of mind knowing their games and data are safe.

Seagate Technology Holdings plc a world leader in data storage solutions, today announced the new Game Drive for Xbox SSD taking the company's popular line of storage for gamers to the next level. Featuring 1 TB of flash-speed performance, this external SSD empowers gamers to store titles from Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, or any generation of Xbox One.

With a bold, refined design, and a built-in Xbox green LED bar that illuminates the gaming center, Game Drive for Xbox SSD complements the modern generation of gaming consoles. Lightweight and slim with USB 3.2 Gen 1 universal compatibility, this drive makes it easy for gamers to take the whole library on-the-go and play anywhere with no external power supply needed. With plug-and-play setup, the Game Drive for Xbox SSD is easily installed in under two minutes through Xbox OS.

Seagate today introduced the IronWolf 525, a line of M.2 NVMe SSDs for NAS applications. Built in the M.2-2280 form-factor, these drives take advantage of the PCI-Express 4.0 x4 interface, and come in capacities of 500 GB (model: ZP500NM30002), 1 TB (ZP1000NM30002), and 2 TB (ZP2000NM30002). What sets these drives apart is the endurance. Seagate claims 2,800 TBW for the 2 TB variant, 1,400 TBW for the 1 TB variant, and 700 TBW for the 500 GB. The drives are backed by 5-year warranties. Under the hood, the Seagate IronWolf 525 series combines a high-endurance variant of KIOXIA 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash, with Phison E16-series controller.

In terms of performance, the 2 TB variant offers up to 740,000 IOPS 4K random reads, up to 700,000 IOPS 4K random writes; up to 5000 MB/s sequential reads, and up to 4400 MB/s sequential writes. The 1 TB variant does up to 760,000 IOPS 4K random reads, up to 700,000 IOPS 4K random writes; and up to 5000 MB/s sequential reads, with up to 4400 MB/s writes. The 500 GB variant is the slowest, with up to 420,000 IOPS 4K random reads, up to 630,000 IOPS 4K random writes, up to 5000 MB/s sequential reads, and up to 2500 MB/s sequential writes. Seagate did not reveal prices, but we expect these drives to eventually replace the IronWolf 510 series, with the 500 GB variant going for roughly $100, the 1 TB variant for roughly $180, and the 2 TB variant roughly $370.

EK, the European manufacturer of premium liquid cooling gear, and Seagate, a renowned HDD&SSD manufacturer, have partnered to launch the FireCuda 530 solid state drive with a heatsink, offering a minimalist design, anodized-aluminium body, and finely textured micropore surface to improve heat transfer and lower SSD temperatures. Thanks to that, FireCuda 530 can run at peak speeds for extended periods of time. This cutting-edge SSD has a Seagate-validated E18 controller and the latest 3D TLC NAND memory, and achieves speeds of up to 7,300 MB/s.

This SSD delivers incredible transfer speeds of up to 7,300 MB/s with extremely fast response times allowing applications to run fast, snappy, and with no bottlenecks in the storage department. It is ideal for high-bandwidth video rendering, previewing, and as a Photoshop scratch-disk for large files. It also works amazing for gaming, providing fast load times and great access times. FireCuda 530 has DDR4 memory for caching, but it also uses an SLC dynamic cache alongside a technology called SmartFlush to recover the SLC cache space quickly and making sure it never fills up its buffer.

Seagate Technology Holdings plc, a world leader in data storage solutions, today announced the new Game Drive Hub for Xbox, Game Drive for Xbox, and Game Drive for Xbox - Halo Infinite Special Edition (SE), taking the company's popular line of storage for gamers to the next level. Built for Xbox gamers demanding peak game storage capacity for today's most advanced games, these new external hard drives are designed to work with Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, or Xbox One, and are compatible with Game Pass.

With minimalist and elegant looks, Game Drive for Xbox and Game Drive Hub for Xbox feature Xbox green LED lighting that complements the modern generation of gaming consoles. Game Drive for Xbox is lightweight in design, making it easy for gamers to take their whole library on-the-go. While both drives are connected and powered with high-speed USB 3.2 Gen 1 (USB 3.0), Game Drive for Xbox does not need a separate power cord, making it easy for gamers to play from anywhere. Both drives are easily installed through Xbox OS in under two minutes so gamers can launch into action.

Seagate has confirmed that it now has a PS5-compatible SSD that should be a worthwhile drop-in replacement for the PS5's user-replaceable storage. This isn't a new product, mind you: the company has announced the Firecuda 530 for some time now. However, the company did announce that this SSD can be used in the PS5 system - even if just barely. With space being so constrained in the PS5's NVMe SSD slot, not all SSDs can even physically fit the available space (110 x 25 x 11.25 mm) - and especially not all SSDs featuring a heatsink, even if PS5's compatibility requirements demand such an heatsink to be present so as to avoid thermal throttling.

The FIrecuda 530 1 TB can easily best Sony's 5500 MB/s sequential read requirements for SSD compatibility with the PS5 - the PCIe 4.0 Firecuda 530 offers 7,300 MB/s on that regard, so it more than fits the part. The user-replaceable SSD storage on the PS5 will only be available for Beta users at first, via an upcoming software update for the console, and there are some hoops to jump through in migrating data to it. Seagate is also releasing a 2 TB version ($569.99) and a 4 TB version ($1,049.99). Seagate's own user-replaceable SSD for the Xbox Series X|S, the Storage Expansion Card, is available in 1 TB capacity for $219.

Sony has recently enabled the M.2 slot found in the PlayStation 5 with a beta update which allows users to upgrade the storage of their device with a compatible PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD. The PlayStation 5 can only install games to the internal storage as external storage is not fast enough so the introduction of this capability will help expand the 825 GB (667.2 GB usable) of internal storage. Sony recommends that users select a PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD with sequential read speeds of 5500 Mbps or higher but have yet to certify any specific models as compatible. Seagate has confirmed that their FireCuda 530 SDD which is offered with capacities from 500 GB to 4 TB will be compatible while various models from Corsair, Sabrent, and Western Digital also appear to meet the speed requirements. Sony should release this feature to non-beta users in the near future and also notes that some games may have reduced performance when running with an M.2 SSD.

Seagate has recently announced during their latest earnings call that they are preparing to launch mass-market 20 TB PMR hard drives in H2 2021. Seagate already has several business-focused 20 TB HAMR drives which are available in limited quantities to select partners. These new 20 TB PMR drives will feature two-dimensional magnetic recording and are already sampling with customers. Seagate is also working on SMR 20 TB drives for Hyperscale systems with specialized software. Seagate hopes this growing lineup of 20 TB drives will help them address specific customer needs.

Seagate CEOWe expect to begin shipping 20 terabyte PMR drives in the second half of this calendar year.

Seagate Technology Holdings plc (NASDAQ: STX) (the "Company" or "Seagate") today reported financial results for its fourth quarter and fiscal year ended July 2, 2021. "Seagate delivered very strong June quarter results achieving the highest revenue in the last 6 years and the highest non-GAAP EPS in 9 years, which capped a fiscal 2021 in which we outperformed our expectations," said Dave Mosley, Seagate's chief executive officer.

"Demand for data is rapidly accelerating in the cloud and at the edge, driving secular growth for mass capacity data storage. Seagate's industry-leading product portfolio for mass data infrastructure places the company in an outstanding position to capitalize on robust demand trends, generate solid and increasing free cash flow and achieve our long-term financial objectives."