Tag: Momentus

Hybrid Drives Not Catching On

Seagate Momentus SSHD press photoSeagate announced last week that the company had shipped a total of 10 million Solid State Hybrid Drives (SSHDs) over the lifetime of the product.  This is far short of expectations by The SSD Guy and a number of other analysts and industry participants.

Why were our expectations higher?  There were a few reasons:

  • The hybrid drive can be viewed as an evolution of the DRAM cache already incorporated into nearly all HDDs today.  Replacing or augmenting an expensive DRAM cache with a slower, cheaper NAND cache makes a lot of sense.
  • An SSHD performs significantly better than Continue reading “Hybrid Drives Not Catching On”

Toshiba Reveals Hybrid HDD Research

Hybrid HDD - An HDD with a NAND Flash CacheNikkei Electronics published an article on May 22 detailing a May 17 briefing by Toshiba president Norio Sasaki. Mr. Sasaki told of the company’s plans to introduce a hybrid HDD (HHDD) in September of this year that is aimed at the Ultrabook market. The article notes that Toshiba is the only company that produces both NAND flash and HDDs, now that Samsung sold its HDD business to Seagate.

The article also says that Toshiba: “aims to become one of the top three companies in the HDD market in terms of market share.” The SSD Guy is forced to wonder at this comment, since there are only three HDD manufacturers in existence today: Toshiba, Western Digital, and Seagate.

The Seagate Momentus XT, the only Continue reading “Toshiba Reveals Hybrid HDD Research”

Seagate’s Barracuda to Add Hybrids

On Tuesday, November 1, Seagate announced improvements to its flagship Barracuda line of 3.5″ HDDs for the desktop.

  • The 5,900 RPM Barracuda Green will be discontinued in February
  • The  7,200 RPM Barracuda XT will be re-named the Barracuda (without the XT designation, which indicates a “top of the line” speed)
  • A new Barracuda XT line will be introduced at a later date and it will  incorporate the hybrid design Seagate pioneered in the popular Momentus XT.

Capacities will range from 250GB-3TB. Continue reading “Seagate’s Barracuda to Add Hybrids”