Seagate: Terabyte Platter HDDs Now in Volume Production

News
By Douglas Perry
published

As part of its quarterly earnings call, Seagate said that it has begun putting 1 Terabyte per platter hard drives into production.

CEO Steve Luczo said that mass production has been delayed and "lagged" behind Seagate's initial plans, but is now on track to be shipped in a volume of "millions" of units by the end of the current quarter. The transition to the mass market will enable the company to take the technology into the mainstream while preserving more profit margin.

While Luczo said that Seagate has not been directly affected by the flooding in Thailand, it conceded that some of its suppliers were affected and that the company will be able to ship between "40 million and 50 million drives" during the December quarter. In the most recent quarter, Seagate shipped a total of 50.8 million hard drives - 6.9 million into the enterprise market, 33.4 million client consumer drives and 10.5 million non-compute hard drives. 67 percent of Seagate drives were distributed via OEMs, 10 percent via retail and 23 percent via distributors.

Seagate's total revenue was slightly up year-over-year to $2.8 billion, but the recorded net profit was down to $140 million.

Douglas Perry
16 Comments Comment from the forums
  • gokanis
    And 5 percect are replacements are for drives that fail.
    Reply
  • nottheking
    1 TB platters might mean that those multi-TB drives might finally be able to be recommendable for stability. Most of us enthusiasts know that if you take a maximum-size HDD, it has 4 or 5 platters in there cramming it full; the thing's bound to fail within a year or two given all the heat and vibrations packed into such a tiny bit of room. 2 & 3-platter drives (I've yet to see many 1-platter desktop drives) are vastly more reliable.

    I think a lot of us enthusiasts have gotten a little tired of having to stick with 1.0 & 1.5 TB HDDs simply due to concerns over failure rates on the 2.0 & 3.0 TB models... So while I think a lot of the headlines will focus on the introduction of 3.5" HDDs of 4.0-5.0 TB capacity, most of us will instead know that this means the 2.0 & 3.0 TB drives will no longer be subjected to the expected issues from being bleeding-edge.
    Reply
  • species8472
    While Luczo said that Seagate has not been directly affected by the flooding in Thailand, it conceded that some of its suppliers were affected and that the company will be able to ship between "40 million and 50 million drives" during the December quarter.

    How did Luczo turn into Seagate?
    Reply
  • gokanis
    Thats why I wait till they increase density. My dismal failures with 3 500gb segates in warranty period and WD 5 of 9 just out of warrenty. I had luck with the WD blacks and the samsung 1 and 2tbs but I cried like a schoolkid when segate bought samsung. I wonder how that will affect quality.
    Reply
  • danwat1234
    nottheking1 TB platters might mean that those multi-TB drives might finally be able to be recommendable for stability. Most of us enthusiasts know that if you take a maximum-size HDD, it has 4 or 5 platters in there cramming it full; the thing's bound to fail within a year or two given all the heat and vibrations packed into such a tiny bit of room. 2 & 3-platter drives (I've yet to see many 1-platter desktop drives) are vastly more reliable.I think a lot of us enthusiasts have gotten a little tired of having to stick with 1.0 & 1.5 TB HDDs simply due to concerns over failure rates on the 2.0 & 3.0 TB models... So while I think a lot of the headlines will focus on the introduction of 3.5" HDDs of 4.0-5.0 TB capacity, most of us will instead know that this means the 2.0 & 3.0 TB drives will no longer be subjected to the expected issues from being bleeding-edge.
    Yeah but with 1TB/platter drives, the platters are still bleeding-edge. Never expect a hard drive to last, just keep a backup so you don't have to worry about reliability. Buy the capacity you want with the speed you want and be done with it. And buy a backup drive
    Reply
  • mikesmithfl
    don't get hung up on statistics. the "stability" is simply the drives ability to swap out bad blocks. with the increased density, the rate of failure will actually increase, but you won't notice it because there will be more spares available to replace the dead ones with...
    Reply
  • CaedenV
    nottheking1 TB platters might mean that those multi-TB drives might finally be able to be recommendable for stability. Most of us enthusiasts know that if you take a maximum-size HDD, it has 4 or 5 platters in there cramming it full; the thing's bound to fail within a year or two given all the heat and vibrations packed into such a tiny bit of room. 2 & 3-platter drives (I've yet to see many 1-platter desktop drives) are vastly more reliable.I think a lot of us enthusiasts have gotten a little tired of having to stick with 1.0 & 1.5 TB HDDs simply due to concerns over failure rates on the 2.0 & 3.0 TB models... So while I think a lot of the headlines will focus on the introduction of 3.5" HDDs of 4.0-5.0 TB capacity, most of us will instead know that this means the 2.0 & 3.0 TB drives will no longer be subjected to the expected issues from being bleeding-edge.There were a few specific models, especially when 2+TB drive first came out, that were pretty terrible (especially Seagate which I love and was very disappointed with), but it was not a problem across the board, and definitely not a problem with most of the current drives available. the problem is not so much failure rate, as much as it is a question of what do you back up to? I have 2 very old 1TB drives (one is going on 7 years), and they are both full to the brim just waiting to fail and break my heart. So I am building a home server which will have RAID 1 or 10 which should give me the redundancy and speed that I need for the network. I just hope the drives last long enough and don't fail before I can afford the 4 drives I need for the server!
    But that is the trick (and real expense) of large drives. It is not like some little 80Gig drive you can throw on a few DVDs. With files that large you have to back up to other large drives, which means buying a 2TB server equals buying 3 drives. 2 For RAID 1, plus a spare external that you occasionally image to, but stays unplugged most of the time as a fail safe. It sucks to loose a 20GB music collection, but it really burns to loose that plus all of the family photos, videos, the movie collection, software, and work projects. Always backup!
    Reply
  • zoemayne
    SEAGATE BOUGHT SAMSUNG?????????????
    Reply
  • Novulux
    zoemayneSEAGATE BOUGHT SAMSUNG?????????????
    Only the HDD division.
    Lol
    Reply
  • andy5174
    2-year-warranty only. No, thank you!
    Reply