Today at the 2019 NAB Show, LaCie, the premium brand from Seagate Technology (NASDAQ: STX), announced two new storage solutions for creative professionals and prosumers. The new LaCie Rugged RAID Shuttle and LaCie 2big RAID build on the brand's record of efficient preservation of high-value, high-resolution digital imagery through the capture, edit, distribution, and archiving workflow

Digital transformation in the media and entertainment industry has led to rapid data growth. In fact, according to a recent IDC whitepaper sponsored by Seagate, the media and entertainment (M&E) datasphere - the amount of data created, captured or replicated across the globe - is expected to grow at a 25% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2018 to 2025.

Seagate at CES 2019 unveiled its first NAS-grade solid state drives, under the Ironwolf 110 series. A "NAS-grade" HDD/SSD is typically that which has its durability or endurance rated halfway between client- and enterprise segments. The Ironwolf 110 series boasts of 1 DWPD endurance, and comes in capacities of up to 3.84 TB. Backing these endurance chops is a 5-year warranty. The drive is also designed keeping in mind the rigors of 24x7 operation and RAID environments. Although built in the 7 mm-thick 2.5-inch form-factor with SATA 6 Gbps interface, Seagate understands that a lot of home/SOHO NAS devices only feature 3.5-inch caddies. It's likely that these drives will include a simple accessory that lets you use them with 3.5-inch trays.

Available in capacities of 3.84 TB, 1.92 TB, 960 GB, 480 GB, and 240 GB, the Ironwolf 110 incorporates 3D TLC NAND flash memory. All variants are capable of up to 560 MB/s sequential reads, and barring the 240 GB variant that writes at up to 345 MB/s, all variants offer up to 535 MB/s sequential writes. The 4K random access read performance ranges between 85,000 to 90,000 IOPS for the 960 GB thru 3.84 TB variants, and between 55,000 to 75,000 IOPS for the 240 thru 480 GB ones.

Seagate eyes itself a slice of the M.2 NVMe SSD market targeting DIY gaming PC builders in 2019. It's come up with slightly more imaginative branding than arch-rival WD, with the FireCuda 510 and BarraCuda 510. The FireCuda 510 is the company's flagship drive, built in the M.2-2280 form-factor, and featuring a PCI-Express 3.0 x4 interface. This drive offers stellar sequential transfer speeds of up to 3450 MB/s reads, with up to 3200 MB/s writes, and random-access numbers of up to 620,000 IOPS reads, with up to 600,000 IOPS writes; which upstages even existing segment leaders such as Samsung 970 PRO and WD Black 3D, at least on paper. It comes in capacities up to 2 TB, and is backed by 5-year warranties.

The BarraCuda 510 isn't far behind its sibling, and despite its deceptive "green" branding, isn't a drab M.2-SATA drive. It's out to compete with the likes of the Samsung 970 EVO. With speeds of up to 3400 MB/s sequential reads, up to 3100 MB/s sequential writes, and a 5-year warranty, this drive debuts in just two models initially - 256 GB and 512 GB, with more models in the pipeline. Retail availability is expected to be in March, 2019 and pricing is not yet confirmed.

Seagate Technology plc., a world leader in data solutions, today announced an exciting extension of its portfolio with several new models, including new solid state drive offerings at CES 2019. From gung-ho gamers to Instagram gurus, photo-collecting parents, or visionary creatives, Seagate offers the data storage solutions that empower users to live their best digital lives in today's fast-changing data-heavy landscape.

Today, consumers have more ways than ever to consume content, driving the need to create, distribute and manage data efficiently. According to a recent IDC whitepaper sponsored by Seagate, five billion consumers are currently interacting with data every single day. By 2025, that number will jump to six billion, or 75 percent of the world's population. Each of those six billion people will have at least one data interaction every 18 seconds, bumping the amount of data created worldwide to 175 zettabytes by 2025. Consumers increasingly need reliable ways to collect, protect, manage and access a good portion of that data, and Seagate's latest products - including the cutting-edge LaCie Mobile Drive, LaCie Mobile SSD, Seagate Backup Plus HDDs, FireCuda 510 and BarraCuda 510 internal SSDs, and IronWolf 110 NAS SSD - are designed to fit a variety of data storage needs and digital lifestyles.

Razer, the world's leading lifestyle brand for gamers, today announces its plan for a long-term lease of a new location for its Southeast Asia headquarters based in the technology and media hub of Singapore. The Company anticipates moving into the new facility in 2020. Razer has been on a strong growth trajectory and delivered a stellar year-on-year growth of 39% in revenues and 46% in gross profit in the first half of 2018. Razer's plans for its new headquarters highlight the Company's growth plans in the esports and gaming industries as the total addressable market (TAM) for gamers is expected to grow from 2.35 billion in 2018 to 2.76 billion in 2021, according to Newzoo Global Games Market Report.

The strategic location of the new Razer headquarters in Singapore also rides on the growing traction of the Services business across Southeast Asia. Razer has proven out to be the preferred monetization platform for gaming and content companies seeking to expand their global presence especially in the fast-growing Southeast Asia market, as evidenced by the recent Razer Gold partnerships with PUBG MOBILE, Nexon America and Webzen. Along with Razer Silver loyalty rewards system, Razer Gold empowers gamers to get the most out of their games and gaming lifestyle.

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.