Why we'll see even more disk drive choice

[Brink]

It's a paradox: we are down to 2 1/2 disk drive companies, but seeing more innovative disk drives then we have in years. Thin drives; hybrid drives; helium filled drives. Why?

Second source. For decades OEM buyers insisted on a second source for every product. This forced vendors to offer cookie-cutter products.

But now that disk drive manufacturing has been reduced to Seagate, Western Digital and Toshiba, what is the point of having a second source? PC vendors just have to trust that they'll have enough drives - and if they don't, well, too bad.

Thank the 2011 Thai floods for that new-found realism.

Read more at: Why we'll see even more disk drive choice | ZDNet

 

[FuturDreamz]

Amazing. A good oligopoly.

 

[Layback Bear]

In my opinion hard drive manufacturers have just a few more years. Their is only so much they can do with a mechanical drive. SSD pricing and size will run them out of the hard drive business up to about a TB. I get this opinion because SSD prices are going down and size is growing larger. Hard drive manufactures will still have a market for very large storage drives for many years to come.

 

[bobafetthotmail]

yeah, hard drive manufacturers are hard-pressed to not be put out of businness by SSD, so it's normal that they pull any trick they can asap.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Consumers like us are not the only market for HDD manufacturers. Larger commercial servers will still need large numbers of large capacity HDDs. It's going to be a long time before SSDs will be able to overcome the limited write cycles that aren't as much of a problem for HDDs not to mention cracking the cost effective size barrier (1-4TB for example). Just look at how much a 512GB SSD costs compared to a somewhat equivalent spinner. For storage only, the speed of an SSD just isn't all that necessary; certainly not enough to justify the price hit.

 

[bobafetthotmail]

R&D is slow. Any action is planned multiple years in advance of a forecasted event.

Although you have a point on write cycles. Capacity is relatively easy to increase, but write-cycles are going to keep them from being employed in servers for a longish time even after they took over single-handedly the consumer market.

 

[whs]

I don't think the man has done proper research. Naming just 3 manufacturers is not correct. With a 5 minute check I found those 9 - and I am sure there are more.

WD
Iomega
HGST
LaCie
Hitachi
ADATA
Fantom
Seagate
Toshiba

 

[bobafetthotmail]

I think the guy talked about the companies that actually manufacture the drives, a lot of companies just sub-contract them to do stuff for them and just attach a sticker with their brand.
For PSUs and flash chips is the same, a ton of companies, a handfew of actual manufacturers.

But I admit I'm not a lot in the HDD businness...

 

[FuturDreamz]

I don't think the man has done proper research. Naming just 3 manufacturers is not correct. With a 5 minute check I found those 9 - and I am sure there are more.

WD
Iomega
HGST
LaCie
Hitachi
ADATA
Fantom
Seagate
Toshiba

WD: In original list
Iomega: does not sell internal drives
HGST: Part of Western Digital
LaCie: does not sell internal drives
Hitachi: as far as I can tell they do make their own drives. along with millions of other things
ADATA: does not sell internal drives
Fantom: does not sell internal drives
Seagate: In original list
Toshiba: In original list

So maybe only hitachi was not in the original list. Not really that noteworthy.

 

[Wenda]

Well, I'll be using big mechanical drives for many years to come, because I refuse
categorically to store anything in the cloud.

I'd be buying them up if there was a danger they'd go out of use/production.


Wenda.

 

[Lee]

My new system (Jan, 2013) contains only SSDs. Two 512 gigs and one 985 gig. See no reason to use HDDs at this point in the game. . .albeit, that is just me, others will think differently. . .

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

...I refuse categorically to store anything in the cloud...

And where do you think data sent to the cloud get stored? On HDDs! It doesn't matter if the HDDs are in an internet accessed server or in your own home, they will still be needed.

Cloud backups are just as secure as HDDs at home as long as you use a reliable service. The free sites are notoriously ephemeral, often disappearing with little or no warning. What's important with any kind of data storage is redundant backups. The bare minimum is one local and one offsite. Data in a reliable (i.e. not a freebie) cloud service is just as safe as it is on you own HDD.

I use Carbonite to provide an offsite backup for my desktop machine. What's nice about it is it continuously updates my data with little or no intervention on my part. My data is encrypted before it ever leaves the computer. I also keep backups on HDDs in a safe deposit box at my credit union and on HDDs at home. Each drive gets a total of four backups: two at home, one at the credit union, and one with Carbonite.

When I travel, I save photos to my notebook and back them up to an external HDD that's stored with my notebook, a 32GB camera card in my purse, and to my Amazon Cloud Drive. Once I get home, I transfer the photos to my desktop machine for editing and storage. Once the desktop copies are backed up, I delete the ones on my notebook, the external HDD, the card, and the cloud drive.

 

[Iforgot]

I don't think the man has done proper research. Naming just 3 manufacturers is not correct. With a 5 minute check I found those 9 - and I am sure there are more.

WD
Iomega
HGST
LaCie
Hitachi
ADATA
Fantom
Seagate
Toshiba

WD: In original list
Iomega: does not sell internal drives
HGST: Part of Western Digital
LaCie: does not sell internal drives
Hitachi: as far as I can tell they do make their own drives. along with millions of other things
ADATA: does not sell internal drives
Fantom: does not sell internal drives
Seagate: In original list
Toshiba: In original list

So maybe only hitachi was not in the original list. Not really that noteworthy.

I thought Hitachi was getting out of manufacturing HDD's, and they sold it to one of the 3 major oem's.
They did buy the IP for HDD's from IBM when IBM stopped making them.
The one's that sell external HDD's only, generally have either Toshiba, Seagate or WD drives in them.

But then I could be wrong....

 

[Iforgot]

...I refuse categorically to store anything in the cloud...

And where do you think data sent to the cloud get stored? On HDDs! It doesn't matter if the HDDs are in an internet accessed server or in your own home, they will still be needed. .

eh gad!!! What!!! so the cloud is just a network server???????????????

Gessss, So why didn't Unix ever think of this?? :sarc:

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I don't think the man has done proper research. Naming just 3 manufacturers is not correct. With a 5 minute check I found those 9 - and I am sure there are more.

WD
Iomega
HGST
LaCie
Hitachi
ADATA
Fantom
Seagate
Toshiba

WD: In original list
Iomega: does not sell internal drives
HGST: Part of Western Digital
LaCie: does not sell internal drives
Hitachi: as far as I can tell they do make their own drives. along with millions of other things
ADATA: does not sell internal drives
Fantom: does not sell internal drives
Seagate: In original list
Toshiba: In original list

So maybe only hitachi was not in the original list. Not really that noteworthy.

I thought Hitachi was getting out of manufacturing HDD's, and they sold it to one of the 3 major oem's.
They did buy the IP for HDD's from IBM when IBM stopped making them.
The one's that sell external HDD's only, generally have either Toshiba, Seagate or WD drives in them.

But then I could be wrong....

WD now owns Hitachi.

 

[jimbo45]

I don't think the man has done proper research. Naming just 3 manufacturers is not correct. With a 5 minute check I found those 9 - and I am sure there are more.

WD
Iomega
HGST
LaCie
Hitachi
ADATA
Fantom
Seagate
Toshiba

WD: In original list
Iomega: does not sell internal drives
HGST: Part of Western Digital
LaCie: does not sell internal drives
Hitachi: as far as I can tell they do make their own drives. along with millions of other things
ADATA: does not sell internal drives
Fantom: does not sell internal drives
Seagate: In original list
Toshiba: In original list

So maybe only hitachi was not in the original list. Not really that noteworthy.

I thought Hitachi was getting out of manufacturing HDD's, and they sold it to one of the 3 major oem's.
They did buy the IP for HDD's from IBM when IBM stopped making them.
The one's that sell external HDD's only, generally have either Toshiba, Seagate or WD drives in them.

But then I could be wrong....

Hi there
a lot of these are "generic" devices just badged with a "distributors" label -- this is done all the time in the component industry -- for example I doubt if a BMW car contains 100% components from BMW -- some will be from people like Bosch, Siemens etc but will be produced under 3rd party agreements.

For Home computing / tablets etc SSD's will make it short term but even these could be phased out -- just look at the Micro sdhc cards - I think 64 GB is possible now -- although 32 GB is very common (and cheap). Once these get faster and more robust there's no reason to expect why these shouldn't be used instead of SSD's -- saves even more space and could be used to increase storage size in tablets significantly.

Cloud / external storage is another matter -- it doesn't really matter what the medium is so long as it is reliable, has enough capacity and data can be recovered. I believe some Banks are still using TAPES for archive storage.

Remember also that in the cloud the servers will migrate the data from cheap archival storage (such as tape) to faster temporary online storage while you are using it -- then it will be migrated again to cheaper storage. The server(s) will create some type of algorithms based on your usage and frequency of access so they will have a type of "pre-fetch" mechanism in place to prevent the initial response time from being too hideously long and in any case there will be some "buffer" mechanism on your local PC too.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Iforgot]

WD: In original list
Iomega: does not sell internal drives
HGST: Part of Western Digital
LaCie: does not sell internal drives
Hitachi: as far as I can tell they do make their own drives. along with millions of other things
ADATA: does not sell internal drives
Fantom: does not sell internal drives
Seagate: In original list
Toshiba: In original list

So maybe only hitachi was not in the original list. Not really that noteworthy.

I thought Hitachi was getting out of manufacturing HDD's, and they sold it to one of the 3 major oem's.
They did buy the IP for HDD's from IBM when IBM stopped making them.
The one's that sell external HDD's only, generally have either Toshiba, Seagate or WD drives in them.

But then I could be wrong....

WD now owns Hitachi.

Samsung HDD division now owned by Seagate

And the question for this is....
Being Samsung are a large OEM for memory chips, I wonder which companies are using there chips in their SSD's.