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Seagate Won't Do Flash SSDs, Waiting For Next-Gen Tech
Posted by Kit Eaton at 7:03 PM on November 6, 2008
Just last month we were reporting "Seagate to begin to switch to SSD" and now company CEO Bill Watkins has said that that's not quite the truth. Seagate will indeed be launching an enterprise-level SSD in 2009, but will not enter the "mobile SSD" market. Whyever not? Because there's no money to be made there: "Right now if you look at it whether it's Micron or Samsung or SanDisk - they're selling at a loss. To do the product is not a big deal but to make money at it - it's important to us." he notes. Instead the company is banking on post MLC technology, something like "a spin around magnetic RAM, it could be a phase shift type of process" says Watkins. Seagate hard drives might be around for a while longer. [Silicon via MRAM-info]
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
OpenPotion
Posted 10:08 PM 6/11/08
For me it is simply about storage space... I'll opt for the largest 7200rpm drives until the SSD's offered in Apple's macbook line are larger than those.
OpenPotion
strider_mt2k
Posted 11:27 PM 6/11/08
Agreed.
Unless there is an application that benefits specifically from SSDs a regular ol' HD will do just fine.
strider_mt2k
williethewisp
Posted 11:22 PM 6/11/08
Same here, Until SSd's are as cheap as standard Hd's theres no point in buying them.
williethewisp
TBM-Fan
Posted 12:31 AM 7/11/08
What's the point of a SSD anyway?
I still need more TB cause there is never enough to store anime, manga, music and movies
Maybe to put Windows on but then the swapfile has to be an normal harddrive cause windows needs to swap a lot even with 4 GB RAM....
TBM-Fan
LastAndLeast
Posted 1:48 AM 7/11/08
A good use for them IMHO would be to RAID 0 up 2 or more of them for your OS and progs and use regular HDDs for media and other data. Not cheap obviously, but if you're buying an SSD to begin with I doubt money is your biggest limiting factor.
LastAndLeast
TheLostVikings
Posted 1:38 AM 7/11/08
@TBM-Fan: Try putting a regular HDD in a car computer, if you go off the beaten track on a regular basis, that HDD will be fucked up in no time by all the shaking.
TheLostVikings
bucho54
Posted 4:17 AM 7/11/08
@TBM-Fan: I currently run an OCZ core SSD with a Samsung F1 1TB drive for storage and large programs. There is no need to put media files on an SSD. The point for my desktop application is speed, but I also get a bonus of less heat and power consumption. I also have a couple 1TB USB drives for my less accessed files, that way I can just shut them off most of the time. Also, I run without any swapfile and 3GB RAM.
bucho54
bucho54
Posted 4:14 AM 7/11/08
@LastAndLeast: I have found that RAID 0 isn't all that needed, especially with the Intel SSDs. I currently run an OCZ core SSD with a Samsung F1 1TB drive for storage and large programs.
bucho54
commentotron
Posted 5:22 AM 7/11/08
I run SSD boot disk on my Media Center machine for power and noise reasons. The recording disk is a 1TB WD "Green Power" unit.
SSD has it's place. A buddy put a fast SSD in his machine to store certain disk intesive games and it made a huge difference.
SSD is not for everyone yet. But I think it is the way we will go eventually.
commentotron
JEmlay
Posted 6:10 AM 7/11/08
@TheLostVikings:
Yup, that's a big plus for SSD. Mostly protection. That doesn't mean the drives can't fail but their failure rate will be a pin drop in comparison to platters.
Not to mention lower heat and lower power consumption.
And pretty soon, faster transfer rates.
JEmlay
LastAndLeast
Posted 2:12 AM 8/11/08
@bucho54: It doesn't provide any improvement?
LastAndLeast
WrightBabalonian
Posted 12:30 AM 7/11/08
I disagree. SSDs are quickly becoming the new performance hard drives, and while they may not have that really high storage space, they do have reliability and the fastest speeds available. This benefits alot of people in the gaming world and heavy disk using applications. The cost may be high, but everything that's new always starts high.
WrightBabalonian
IrisTithonus
Posted 10:34 PM 6/11/08
I just returned 4 1.5 TB seagate Barracuda because of a major freezing issue inherent with them. I couldn't figure out why every few minutes my system would just hang for about 45 seconds, and then I googled 'seagate 1.5 TB freeze" and found out that this is a major issue for many many users. Seagate's being very tight lipped about any possible fix for the issue. Funny thing, they weren't so tight lipped when it came to bragging about these new drives. Shame shame Seagate! How bout a little less time on the PR and a little more time on customer service!
IrisTithonus