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.

Seagate Technology plc., a world leader in storage solutions, today announced the signing of a strategic cooperation agreement with Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU), the leading Chinese language internet search provider, covering the fields of information technology, big data analysis and advanced storage system development and implementation.

The pact renews an existing agreement between the two firms signed in September 2014, under which Baidu would give priority to Seagate when selecting storage products and solutions, and Seagate would give advanced access to products, services and support to Baidu, as well as assign a dedicated team of engineers to the company.

The cooperation between the two parties builds on this, with Seagate providing double the amount of technical cooperation, and closer links to Baidu for its business needs. With regard to new products, Baidu will be at the forefront of Internet users in China implementing Seagate's new storage products, and also the two sides will jointly develop customized systems to meet Baidu business needs. In addition, the procurement model for both companies will be further upgraded to save costs for each side.

It appears that although MLC NAND-based SSDs have many advantages to HDD's from a physical-reliability point of view, the old spinning rust drives might still have one advantage over SSDs: A specially crafted write operation can't corrupt your data.

That's what a new report from Carnegie Mellon University, Seagate, and ETH Zürich is showing: That MLC-based SSD Drives are vulnerable to data-corrupting attacks as simple as a specially crafted write operation.

Drones are creating more content than ever before, and with the announcement of the Seagate DJI Fly Drive, managing that surge of data is about to get easier. The first data solution to come from Seagate and DJI's strategic partnership, Fly Drive will allow drone pilots to efficiently back up their photo and video content on location, thanks to its large storage capacity, integrated MicroSD card slot, quick transfer speeds and durable build. It also comes with a complimentary two-month subscription to Adobe Premiere Pro CC, part of Adobe Creative Cloud-placing the keys to creativity in the hands of drone enthusiasts everywhere.

NVM Express, Inc., the organization that developed the NVM Express specification for accessing solid-state drives (SSDs) on a PCI Express (PCIe) bus, today announced the results of its recent board elections. Elected to Promoter positions were Facebook, Micron, Microsoft, Samsung, Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital. Facebook and Toshiba are new to the Promoter level, and the others are incumbents. The election winners join existing Promoters Cisco, Dell EMC, Intel, Microsemi, NetApp and Oracle, whose current terms expire at the end of 2017.

Representatives from the 13 Promoter companies form the NVM Express, Inc. Board of Directors, which governs the organization, including setting strategic direction. All Contributor and Promoter member companies are eligible to run for Promoter positions, where there are elections each year for roughly half the positions.

"We're very pleased to welcome Toshiba and Facebook to the NVM Express, Inc. Board, to help shape the future direction of NVM Express technology and the organization," said Amber Huffman, NVM Express President. "In 2016, we marked major milestones, such as publishing the NVM Express over Fabrics specification. We look forward to publishing revision 1.3 in the first half of this year - with much more to come later in 2017."

Backblaze has just revealed their HDD failure rates statistics, with updates regarding 2016's Q4 and full-year analysis. These 2016 results join the company's statistics, which started being collected and collated in April 2013, to shed some light on the most - and least reliable - manufacturers. A total of 1,225 drives failed in 2016, which means the drive failure rate for 2016 was just 1.95 percent, a improving over the 2.47 percent that died in 2015 and miles below the 6.39 percent that hit the garbage bin in 2014.

Organizing 2016's failure rates by drive size, independent of manufacturer, we see that 3 TB hard drives are the most reliable (with 1,40% failure rates), with 5 TB hard drives being the least reliable (at a 2,22% failure rate). When we organize the drives by manufacturer, HGST, which powers 34% (24,545) of the total drives (71,939), claims the reliability crown, with a measly 0,60% failure rate, and WDC bringing up the rear on reliability terms, with an average 3,88% failure rate, while simultaneously being one of the least represented manufacturers, with only 1,626 HDDs being used from the manufacturer.

The woes for the trusty old HDD continue, as Seagate, one of the world's biggest players on the HDD manufacturing field, has confirmed they are closing up one of their largest plants. The factory, located in Suzhou, China, is one of the company's largest HDD production epicenters, and its closure will significantly reduce the company's HDD output - a step in the company's purported "optimizations" towards reducing their HDD production capabilities from 55-60 million HDDs per quarter to around 35-40 million. Production and demand's age-old feud are once again taking their toll, as demand for spindle-drive technology subsides on the wake of SSDs increased performance and consecutive price declines, with most laptops now shipping with either SSD-based storage or cheaper, yet less power-hungry, eMMC solutions.