Seagate Introduces BarraCuda 2.5” HDDs with Up to 5 TB Capacity

[Coaxialgamer]

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Seagate has formally introduced a new family of hard drives in the 2.5” form-factor. It is designed for laptops as well as external storage solutions. The new BarraCuda HDDs are based on 1 TB shingled magnetic recording platters and Seagate’s multi-tier caching technology. They enhance the maximum capacity of the company’s 2.5” HDDs to 5 TB - making the BarraCuda ST5000LM000 the world’s highest-capacity 2.5” hard drive.

The new Seagate BarraCuda 2.5” drives resemble the company’s Mobile HDDs introduced earlier this year and use a similar set of technologies: motors with 5400 RPM spindle speed, platters based on shingled magnetic recording technology with over 1300 Gb/in2 areal density, and multi-tier caching. The 3 TB, 4 TB and 5 TB BarraCuda 2.5” HDDs that come with a 15 mm z-height are designed for external storage solutions because virtually no laptop can accommodate drives of that thickness. Meanwhile, the 7 mm z-height drives (500 GB, 1 TB and 2 TB) are aimed at mainstream laptops and SFF desktops that need a lot of storage space.

All the new BarraCuda 2.5” HDDs feature 128 MB of DRAM cache as well as multi-tier caching (MTC) technology, which is designed to hide peculiarities of SMR. Hard drives featuring shingled recording write new magnetic tracks that overlap part of the previously written tracks. This may slow down the writing process since the architecture requires HDDs to rewrite adjacent tracks after any writing operation. To “conceal” such peculiarities, Seagate does a number of tricks. Firstly, it organizes SMR tracks into bands in a bid to limit the amount of overwriting. Secondly, the MTC technology uses several bands of PMR tracks on the platters, around 1 GB of NAND flash cache as well as DRAM cache. When workloads generate relatively small amount of writes, the HDD writes data to NAND and/or to the PMR tracks at a predictable data rate. Then, during light workloads or idle time, the HDD transfers written data from the caches to SMR tracks, asdescribed by Mark Re (CTO of Seagate) earlier this year.

 

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Seagate’s new BarraCuda 2.5”/7 mm HDDs for laptops should hit notebooks in the coming weeks as the company is already shipping them to its customers. Seagate does not currently offer SED and FIPS options for its BarraCuda family (those who need encryption can still get Seagate's Mobile HDDs based on SMR technology). The company plans to add these technologies to the BarraCuda arsenal in the future.

The BarraCuda 2.5”/15 mm drives for external storage solutions will be used inside Seagate’s own DAS devices such as the Backup Plus Portable Drive and the Expansion Portable Hard Drive products. The Seagate Backup Plus Plus Portable Drive 5 TB (STDR5000100) is due in early November and will cost around $150 - $160. This device will be the world's highest-capacity portable DAS and will not immediately have direct rivals in this particular form-factor. At present, the maximum-capacity 2.5” HDD offered by Western Digital is 4 TB with a 12.5 mm z-height. It is used inside a number of My Passport drives.

All the BarraCuda 2.5” drives are backed by a two-year warranty.

 

While some will argue that HDD's are dead and/or dying (which i agree with to some extent ) , they're still the best solution for storing large amounts of data for (relatively) cheap.

 

flash storage isn't just there yet , and hard drives still have some life in them . And they certainly won't go down without a fight . To think the technology is 60 years old and still widely used ( first hard drive was made by IBM in 1956 ) ...

 

source : http://www.anandtech.com/show/10757/seagate-introduces-barracuda-25-mobile-hard-drives-with-up-to-5-tb-capacity  

[Vitalius]

Dude, four of these HDDs, and a 5.25" bay converter for 2.5" drives = storage 4 life.

Unfortunately, the 5TB versions are 15mm thick. Most converters for 5.25" bays only support up to 10mm. 

Still, so much storage potential. Soooo much.

[Gruenbaum]

Hdd aren't meant for long term storage unlike tape drives but they are good for mass movement of data

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 minutes ago, Vitalius said:

Dude, four of these HDDs, a 5.25" bay converter for 2.5" drives = storage 4 life.

Unfortunately, the 5TB versions are 15mm thick. Most converters for 5.25" bays only support up to 10mm. 

Still, so much storage potential. Soooo much.

There also msr drives, so they will be slow.

[Vitalius]

13 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

There also msr drives, so they will be slow.

Ah, well, RAID 10 four of them and I'm sure you won't notice as much. 

I don't know though. I may buy one to try it out.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Vitalius said:

Ah, well, RAID 10 four of them and I'm sure you won't notice as much. 

I don't know though. I may buy one to try it out.

Its about 25MB/s writes

[DrMikeNZ]

12 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Its about 25MB/s writes

So, Raid 0 sixteen of them?

[tlink]

54 minutes ago, Coaxialgamer said:

While some will argue that HDD's are dead and/or dying (which i agree with to some extent ) , they're still the best solution for storing large amounts of data for (relatively) cheap.

they're not. tape drives are the best sollution for that. cheapest $ per gb you will ever see. the only reason why we use HDD as consumers is because they are more tolerable to temperatures, everyone else uses tape drives.

[Coaxialgamer]

3 minutes ago, tlink said:

they're not. tape drives are the best sollution for that. cheapest $ per gb you will ever see. the only reason why we use HDD as consumers is because they are more tolerable to temperatures, everyone else uses tape drives.

Tape drives don't provide anywhere near the performance needed however.  You cannot realistically  run software off a tape drive. 

[tlink]

19 minutes ago, Coaxialgamer said:

Tape drives don't provide anywhere near the performance needed however.  You cannot realistically  run software off a tape drive. 

thats true, but the reason that hdd's are dying is because the price for SSD's is rapidly dropping. while you can't run software of them you can use them for backups, and hdd's probably will get replaced by large SSD's by then. there is no use in storing data from an ssd to hdd if you can store it on a tape drive. most data in data centers is cold storage which will be stored on tape drives (if they care about their money), while the hottest data will be stored on SSD's. the middle of that will quickly fade as soon as SSD improvements settle down, the main reason that ssd addoption is quite slow in data centers is because the rapid rate of improvement in SSD tech. why upgrade now when next year something considerably better has come out? i give HDD's 20 years max. probably 10 years but hell who knows.

[Zodiark1593]

31 minutes ago, tlink said:

they're not. tape drives are the best sollution for that. cheapest $ per gb you will ever see. the only reason why we use HDD as consumers is because they are more tolerable to temperatures, everyone else uses tape drives.

At the moment (from a home use standpoint) hard drives offer superior capacity for the dollar than SSDs, and Tape Drives are far too expensive up-front and far too slow for anything other than cold data storage. 

 

In the home space, the most cost effective solution while retaining both speed and capacity remains running both an SSD and a HDD or two. 

[Doobeedoo]

Really nice for such capacity in that form factor. But, why, 5400RPM for performance oriented hybrid HDD I don't get? I've had Momentus XT which is SSHD and 7200RPM and yes 2.5" drive.

[That Norwegian Guy]

I want that 5.25" HDD already, why don't we have them, like, give us them

[QueenDemetria]

17 minutes ago, That Norwegian Guy said:

I want that 5.25" HDD already, why don't we have them, like, give us them

They're dead and gone.

[Dabombinable]

Faster than my 2.5" 500GB 7200RPM which dates back to 2010. Nice.

[That Norwegian Guy]

1 hour ago, QueenDemetria said:

They're dead and gone.

I know, but I need a revival to happen, sure there are definite drawbacks but I'd buy one with modern technologies in a heartbeat.

[Sakkura]

15 hours ago, Coaxialgamer said:

flash storage isn't just there yet , and hard drives still have some life in them . And they certainly won't go down without a fight . To think the technology is 60 years old and still widely used ( first hard drive was made by IBM in 1956 ) ...

You do know there's flash memory in these drives too, right?

15 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

There also msr drives, so they will be slow.

SMR - and the NAND cache etc. should help alleviate the issues except in intense write workloads (not normal on consumer laptops).

[Coaxialgamer]

5 hours ago, Sakkura said:

You do know there's flash memory in these drives too, right?

 

well there is a relatively small cache, but it doesn't really count. We're still using spinning magnetic disks 

[Prysin]

23 hours ago, tlink said:

thats true, but the reason that hdd's are dying is because the price for SSD's is rapidly dropping. while you can't run software of them you can use them for backups, and hdd's probably will get replaced by large SSD's by then. there is no use in storing data from an ssd to hdd if you can store it on a tape drive. most data in data centers is cold storage which will be stored on tape drives (if they care about their money), while the hottest data will be stored on SSD's. the middle of that will quickly fade as soon as SSD improvements settle down, the main reason that ssd addoption is quite slow in data centers is because the rapid rate of improvement in SSD tech. why upgrade now when next year something considerably better has come out? i give HDD's 20 years max. probably 10 years but hell who knows.

HDDs are here to stay, unlike SSDs, which loses endurance each and every time they shrink the process node (yes, that is the byproduct of shrinking the litography of NAND), HDDs have superior offline/powerloss data protection. A SSD will hold its data max 12 months without power, a HDD will hold its data 10 years or more without power and still work when you power it up.

 

Just like tape drives are even more long lasting then HDD platters, HDD platters are way longer lasting then any form of flash memory will ever be.

 

As for consumer drives, sure, 20-30 years before everything consumer is SSD, i can buy that. But enterprise/data centre? nop, not happening until we can find another long-term storage medium with relatively high endurance and low cost.

[tlink]

36 minutes ago, Prysin said:

HDDs are here to stay, unlike SSDs, which loses endurance each and every time they shrink the process node (yes, that is the byproduct of shrinking the litography of NAND), HDDs have superior offline/powerloss data protection. A SSD will hold its data max 12 months without power, a HDD will hold its data 10 years or more without power and still work when you power it up.

 

Just like tape drives are even more long lasting then HDD platters, HDD platters are way longer lasting then any form of flash memory will ever be.

 

As for consumer drives, sure, 20-30 years before everything consumer is SSD, i can buy that. But enterprise/data centre? nop, not happening until we can find another long-term storage medium with relatively high endurance and low cost.

there is no reason to store data longer than 12 months on an hdd in an enterprise environment, its either on tapes or on ssd's. or where you agreeing with me on that?

[Coaxialgamer]

12 hours ago, That Norwegian Guy said:

I want that 5.25" HDD already, why don't we have them, like, give us them

latency and cost are major issues

[Syntaxvgm]

^15mm 2.5 inch hdd

yah not sure where I'm gonna put that. 

I was hoping for something bigger than 2TB to fit in my laptop to replace the HDD in the optical bay