Next Step for Seagate 3.5-Inch HDD: 5TB

Seagate is supposed to launch next quarter a new 3.5-inch HDD at 5TB with five 1TB platters, according to an inside source of the company.

Its highest capacity desktop drive is currently the 6Gb SATA ST4000DM000 at 4TB with fours disks and height heads. WD (WD Re or WD4000FYYZ) and HGST (Ultrastar 7K4000) also have 4TB 3.5-inch models, as well as Toshiba (MG03ACA/MG03SCA and MG03ACAY/MG03SCP).

But a big jump – 50% more capacity – was reached by WD’s subsidiary HGST with its most recent unit, the Ultrastar He6, filled with helium, reaching the worldwide record of 6TB with seven disks packed in the same 3.5-inch form factor standard. It is already in production in Singapore and later in lower cost manufacturing plants China or Thailand, according to Digitimes.

Seagate will use the current standard PMR technology to get 5TB.

Also Seagate’s VP EMEA Marc Whitby confirms to StorageNewsLetter.com that his company does not have at all helium technology in the roadmap, and will evolve to SMR (Shingle Magnetic Recording) and later HAMR (Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording).

But you can bet that HGST will continue to be largely the leader in capacity as helium can be used with SMR and HAMR, and consequently giving always the possibility to add more disks inside these advanced units than its competitors.

As you know, a lot of users always jump on HDDs with the highest capacity for their growing needs of storage. HGST has the technology to kill the high end HDD market for a while, the only question being the price of He6, not revealed – and supposed to be high – even if this unit has already being adopted by several companies to integrated it into their storage subsystems.