World Record for 2.5-Inch HDD by Seagate: 5TB

Productivity, creativity and even gaming have been transformed over the last decade thanks to the mobile revolution. One striking example – the amazing photos people take today were not even possible 10 years ago. The same is true of video and other forms of artistic expression and entertainment. And when it comes to professional productivity, there are countless, well researched studies that show how we have become far more prolific in our chosen professions because of what the mobile revolution has enabled.

With these changes comes the ability to store everything in the cloud. And while we love what that enables, if you’re a technology enthusiast, an avid gamer, a creative professional or simply your family’s resident photographer (like many of us here at Seagate), you still want to take your digital stuff with you wherever you go. Which is why Seagate Technology plc announced the availability of two advanced mobile consumer drives yet – the 5TB mobile BarraCuda and the 2TB FireCuda. Both products are based on Seagate’s 2.5-inch 1TB platters introduced in January.

BarraCuda and FireCuda

Performance, versatility and reliability for mobile PC applications
The BarraCuda mobile offers versatility, performance and reliability for nearly every mobile PC compute need and application. However, as consumers ourselves, we want flexibility in how we store and move our data, which is why we are offering internal and external storage options for this drive – a thin 7mm mobile or laptop upgrade design and a 15mm design for external solutions, both at the best price point per terabyte and millimeter compared to competitive storage options. So, if you’re an enthusiast builder and tinkerer, go ahead and do your own upgrade. If you’re all about the content and don’t like to mess with the tech, all you need to do is plug in and you’re off and running.

FireCuda represents the fastest, thinnest and lightest 2TB HDD. Not only does it offer performance and capacity at a great price, it includes some new technology.

FireCuda uses 8GB of flash to enable lightning quick boot times, blazing application starts, and dominating game load speed. While we’re proud of this performance, we agree these are table stakes nowadays. Which is why, want to give you a quick peak under the hood, because that’s where this drive gets really interesting.

Peek under FireCuda’s hood
how to combine performance, capacity and efficient energy
That 8GB of onboard flash? Seagate designs new firmware that allows it to take over storage and management for system tasks and applications-in-use, allowing the platters to spin down and cut your power consumption without sacrificing performance. It also developed sophisticated caching algorithms that continuusly analyze how you use your system. These algorithms then get to work tweaking every aspect of FireCuda’s operations so that the drive is always synchronous with the way you work and play. We call it Multi-Tier Caching and it would be like owning a smart car that continuously tunes itself up as you drive – always performing at efficiency for the task at hand.

Both BarraCuda mobile and FireCuda are new entries in the recently launched Guardian Series of highly engineered storage solutions.

BarraCuda mobile comes with a 2-year limited warranty and FireCuda is backed by a 5-year limited warranty.

Comments

With the new 5TB BaraCuda, Seagate now holds a world record in capacity for a 2.5-inch HDD, beating the 4TB milestone released last year (see table below).

The secret is based on the company's 1TB/disk platform (1,307Gb/in² average areal density) already announced last January but this time with a unit integrating 5 disks and 10 heads in a 15mm z-height 2.5-inch form factor.

This 6Gb SATA device uses standard PMR, not SMR, with a 5,400rpm rotational speed and 14ms average seek time.

It is supposed to retail for $55 to $85 depending on capacity.

The 7mm high FireCuda at 2TB is based on the same technology with only two disks for $85 to $95 as indicated by Seagate. On Amazon, the unit is currently priced at €114.90. It includes 8GB of NAND flash along with its Multi-Tier Caching algorithms, to boost workload performance in mainstream/gaming applications.

HDD continues to try to react to the success of SSD with two main and only arguments: price and capacity. But today we approach the limit of areal density for the magnetic drives with 1,3Gb/in² using PMR. SMR was inaugurated to do better but didn't convince the market. Helium technology is not a way to increase the areal density but to add more disks into devices being more expansive to build. We are waiting for HAMR since several years but nothing appears up to now.

On the other side there is a vast possibility to increase the capacity of SSDs with new 3D technology. The limit of 2.5-inch HDD is now 5TB but in a drive with 15mm Z-height. Samsung Enterprise is already shipping 15mm high 2.5-inch SSD at 15TB based on V-NAND, even beating largely all HDDs at a maximum 10TB in 3.5-inch form factor.

Consequently you can get now much more capacity on SDD rather than HDD in the same volume, but for a much higher price, considering that the trend is in favor of SDDs whose prices are going down faster.