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WD Wants to Save Rotating Magnetic Storage

By - Source: Western Digital | B 36 comments

WD has formed a group with other HDD makers to promote rotating magnetic storage tech.

Despite investing heavily into the solid-state drive market, Western Digital looks to be rooting for the old-fashioned mechanical drive technology for some time to come. The company said on Tuesday that it has founded the Storage Products Association (SPA) with other hard drive companies to spread the word that rotating magnetic storage technologies still offer value, and along with SSHDs, play a critical role in everyone's digitally-mastered lives.

The company said that the new SPA group also includes HGST, Seagate and Toshiba, and is making its debut at the Flash Memory Summit, beginning Tuesday at the Santa Clara Convention Center. SPA member companies will also participate in a panel titled Solid State Hybrid Drives Help Meet Today's Storage Requirements to discuss the role of HDDs and SSHDs. The panel will be moderated by IDC Research's vice president for hard disk drives, John Rydning.

Western Digital said that the new SPA group will provide education to its customers, partners, members and users of HDDs and SSHDs. SPA will also participate in industry and user events -- such as the one listed above -- and will publish materials about end users' storage needs and effective usage of a mix of storage technologies.

"Driven by continued, rapid expansion of digital content production, demand for storage is expected to grow in the mid-30s percent range annually through 2020," said Tim Leyden, WD president. "While, in that timeframe, a mix of technologies will be deployed to appropriately serve customers, about 75 percent of the capacity is still expected to be rotating magnetic storage devices."

Leyden added that every smartphone, tablet and personal computer user today depends on the "value and reliability" of HDDs or SSHDs to secure their data, whether the storage solution resides in their device or in the cloud. "SPA will help consumers and businesses appreciate the value of their growing content storage needs and the remarkable rotating magnetic technologies that save and protect that content," he said.

According to a demographic provided by the group, the price per gigabyte has plummeted on average nearly 25 percent every quarter over the last decade. In 1986, the price per GB was a meaty $71,000 USD. Less than a decade later, that price plunged below $1,000 USD. Now the price is around 10 cents per GB. Even more, an areal density is expected to be 1560 gigabits by 2016 compared to the 780 Gb max areal density in 2012.

"Unlike property prices, virtual space is becoming cheaper," the group said. "In 2003, one square foot of a Manhattan apartment could buy slightly less than 470 GB of hard drive storage. The same amount of space today is more than enough to stockpile all of your life memories worth almost 11 TB of data storage."

For more information about WD's new cheerleading squad for hard drives and hybrid drives, head here. Pom-poms aren't required.

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Top Comments
  • 16 Hide
    somebodyspecial , August 16, 2013 8:42 AM
    How much cheaper? How about pre-flood pricing at least? I bought many 1TB seagates for $55 and all had longer warranty. They've now shortened it greatly and charge us more thus tripling their profits.

    Check profits pre-flood and you'll see WD and Seagate made 1/3 or 1/4 of what they are now respectively. So, I'm thinking we're being overcharged and they have plenty of room to lower prices & should give back our warranty length!

    IE Seagate made 511mil in 2011 pre flood. After 2.86B in 2012, then 1.84B now as pricing is finally coming down a bit.
    http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/financial-statements?symbol=US%3aSTX
    They have been making a KILLING for the last 2 yrs. The flood seems to be the best thing that ever happened to both companies. The flood was over-hyped BS. It didn't affect either company much when price gouging us to death during the problems. They made out like bandits claiming it lasted for a long time but it was over quickly and they were producing more than ever before. When your profits soar from 511mil to 2.86bil in the year after the flood, you aren't hurting due to the flood correct? That's over 5x the profit. At these numbers I'd be hoping for more fake floods yearly if I was them (they probably pray for another!).
  • 11 Hide
    LaughALot , August 16, 2013 6:17 AM
    Bring out your dead.
    Here's one.
    That'll be nine pence.
    I'm not dead.
    What?
    Nothing, here's your nine pence.
    I'm not dead.
    Ere, he says he's not dead.
    Yes he is.
    No I'm not.
Other Comments
  • 0 Hide
    CrArC , August 16, 2013 6:16 AM
    I'd be happy to support their business with many hard drive purchases if they'd just lower the friggin' price. I need several TB more storage but can't afford it, even if it is massively cheaper than years ago.
  • Display all 36 comments.
  • 11 Hide
    LaughALot , August 16, 2013 6:17 AM
    Bring out your dead.
    Here's one.
    That'll be nine pence.
    I'm not dead.
    What?
    Nothing, here's your nine pence.
    I'm not dead.
    Ere, he says he's not dead.
    Yes he is.
    No I'm not.
  • 0 Hide
    g00fysmiley , August 16, 2013 6:56 AM
    as ssd prices keep coming down hdd are going to have to get exrtremely cheap per gig to remain viable in the next decade... but for now most systems use a hdd for media storage and a ssd for programs, i see this remaining to be the trend for the for the next 4-5 years but with the efficiency of ssd's and as costs go down mechanical drives will have very limited market in the next 10-15. that is assuming that current ssd prices continue to plummet and i can get a 1 TB ssd in the $100 range in 5 years which i think is likely
  • -1 Hide
    aramisathei , August 16, 2013 7:30 AM
    I somehow doubt that any decline in HDDs/SSHDs is due to lack of awareness---unless you assume that people have no idea what their storage mediums have been for the past couple decades (in which case, they probably still don't care).
  • 2 Hide
    jn77 , August 16, 2013 7:31 AM
    A year ago a 1TB SSD was running $1500-$2400 depending on the brand, this year you can get a Samsung EVO 1TB for just over $600..... for $1200 I can put 2x 1TB EVO SSD's in my latop for 2TB Storage in a laptop...... but on the same token, I can buy how many 750gb WD Black's for my laptop for $1200 ?
  • -7 Hide
    TyrOd , August 16, 2013 7:41 AM
    God Toms Hardware is so damn clueless. The gap between $/GB in Hard drives and SSD is getting bigger every year. There will be 40TB bit patterned recording hard drives before there are 3TB SSD planar SSD. Also, the sequential read/write speeds of hard drives are getting faster more so than SSD in comparison as well.
    SSD is not a replaceent for hard drives except for in enthusiast/specialized environments where access time is far more important than sequential speeds.

    WD and the rest of the industry knows the future of SSD is as a caching solution for Hard Drives. It's Toms that is clueless and thinks they need saving.
  • 2 Hide
    InvalidError , August 16, 2013 7:43 AM
    Quote:
    I'd be happy to support their business with many hard drive purchases if they'd just lower the friggin' price.

    How much lower do you want them to be? At $70-80 for 1TB or $100-110 for 2TB if you look for the cheapest models, I doubt they can afford to make HDDs significantly cheaper without compromising reliability - engineering mechanical devices that will maintain their operating tolerances for tens of thousands of operating hours requires considerable precision and quality materials.

    Cutting any (further) corners on that would likely mean drastically increased failure rates and that would ruin their reputation... IIRC, IBM's desktop storage division never recovered from their "DeathStar" incident.
  • 2 Hide
    The_Trutherizer , August 16, 2013 7:53 AM
    Look for me HDD tech will definitely have a role to play and I can understand why they want to leverage on cloud storage, but for PCs SSD is just simply the way. Mind you i have an SSD system drive and a very large HDD at the moment - A configuration that is serving my exquisitely well. Its just that I know what's just on the horizon with SSD tech...
  • -1 Hide
    TravisJunky , August 16, 2013 8:15 AM
    The fact is of those companies mentioned (WD, Toshiba, Seagate) they're all falling behind in the SSD market. Companies like Samsung and Intel hold the market on SSD where WD and Seagate were dominate in the HDD market. This is just a strategy to keep what will become an outdated market alive instead of innovating and making quality SSD's to compete with. Just my opinion.
  • 4 Hide
    stevejnb , August 16, 2013 8:24 AM
    Quote:
    I'd be happy to support their business with many hard drive purchases if they'd just lower the friggin' price. I need several TB more storage but can't afford it, even if it is massively cheaper than years ago.


    So they are lowering the prices - massively - but you still need it lowered more. Curious, if you're too low on funds to buy HD's, what type of storage medium are you using that is saving you money over hard drives? Tape drives?
  • 16 Hide
    somebodyspecial , August 16, 2013 8:42 AM
    How much cheaper? How about pre-flood pricing at least? I bought many 1TB seagates for $55 and all had longer warranty. They've now shortened it greatly and charge us more thus tripling their profits.

    Check profits pre-flood and you'll see WD and Seagate made 1/3 or 1/4 of what they are now respectively. So, I'm thinking we're being overcharged and they have plenty of room to lower prices & should give back our warranty length!

    IE Seagate made 511mil in 2011 pre flood. After 2.86B in 2012, then 1.84B now as pricing is finally coming down a bit.
    http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/financial-statements?symbol=US%3aSTX
    They have been making a KILLING for the last 2 yrs. The flood seems to be the best thing that ever happened to both companies. The flood was over-hyped BS. It didn't affect either company much when price gouging us to death during the problems. They made out like bandits claiming it lasted for a long time but it was over quickly and they were producing more than ever before. When your profits soar from 511mil to 2.86bil in the year after the flood, you aren't hurting due to the flood correct? That's over 5x the profit. At these numbers I'd be hoping for more fake floods yearly if I was them (they probably pray for another!).
  • -4 Hide
    eklipz330 , August 16, 2013 8:44 AM
    Failure to modernize their company will be their demise. WD is probably run by old people who lack imagination. I remember back in 09 how they stated ssd isn't ready for prime time, and it's a bad investment. Bad move
  • -1 Hide
    RetiredChief , August 16, 2013 8:50 AM
    Love my SSDs. You pros/cons
    1) Performance no if/and/buts SSDs win
    2) Long term BU (stored) - HDD. SSDs NAND loses data much faster than a HDD when non-powered. NAND cells will decay within 3 Months to a Year. Have used a HDD that was in storage for approx. 4 Years.
    3) Cost per gig, excluding performance, HDD - at least in the near term. Long term SSDs could become cheaper than HDD (manufacturing vs "Stamping out NAND based "Cards).

    Some Observations:
    .. 5 yrs downstream SSDs and HDDs may be a dyeing technology.
    .. HDDs manuf need to improve on quality as Current Consumer HDDs have decreased over the years (NOTE higher priced enterprise drives are OK). I have some OLD HDDs that are almost 20 Years old and still chugging away (2 Gigabyte SCSI drives) and some OLD IDE drives around 15 Years old - Somehow do not think the "new" drive, with their much higher performance will last near that long.
    PS The tests that show SSD should last some 17 years, I do NOT think are valid lifecycle test.
  • 1 Hide
    bin1127 , August 16, 2013 9:03 AM
    mag hd's are pretty fast nowadays so ssd's speed cannot be the dealbreaker it once was. 180 mb/s is plenty fast for doing most pc stuff and 500mb/s can only be reached on sequential read. access etc is very good on ssd but the greatest advantage I'd say is the lower power draw compared to mag hd. but do i want to pay 6x the price if it really isn't necessary?
  • 1 Hide
    WithoutWeakness , August 16, 2013 9:06 AM
    Quote:
    A year ago a 1TB SSD was running $1500-$2400 depending on the brand, this year you can get a Samsung EVO 1TB for just over $600..... for $1200 I can put 2x 1TB EVO SSD's in my latop for 2TB Storage in a laptop...... but on the same token, I can buy how many 750gb WD Black's for my laptop for $1200 ?


    You can still only buy 2 for your laptop; you would just keep the remaining $1050 in your pocket. Buying $1200 worth of hard drives doesn't suddenly give your laptop 14 hard drive bays. :D 
  • -3 Hide
    techguy911 , August 16, 2013 9:12 AM
    Problem is regular hard drives are old technology they are getting close to the limit there are many alternatives that are being researched atm like crystal storage:

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-superman-of-hard-drives-new-5dimensional-computer-memory-crystal-will-survive-the-human-race-say-scientists-8700319.html

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8699852/Supermans-memory-crystals-may-become-reality-in-computers.html

  • -3 Hide
    Pherule , August 16, 2013 9:37 AM
    Having worked for a computer repair company, I can say that hard drive failure rates are way too high. Spinning drives need to be ditched completely by 2020.
  • 1 Hide
    dextermat , August 16, 2013 9:48 AM
    I'd pay 150-200 $ for a reliable 1tb HD. While I have better experience with WD hard drive. Any failure within 5 years is a big failure to me.

    Black edition HD FTW!
  • 1 Hide
    qlum , August 16, 2013 10:37 AM
    I hope we will see the common pre death innovation burst you have seen with so many technologies that went away as that could mean a lot faster harddrives or a lot more gb per €.
  • -3 Hide
    wysir , August 16, 2013 1:42 PM
    This coming from a company that doesn't have any grasp in SSD tech is laughable. You want HDDs to stay around? What happened to that WD innovation tech that was supposed to get HDDs spinning @ 20k RPMs by using (H or He) in the drive instead of oxygen. The only useful place in technology for these are only in High-End PCs and servers.
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