Seagate introduces 6TB hard drive for enterprise applications

Seagate Technology on Monday introduced its first hard disk drive with 6 platters and 6TB capacity. The HDD is aimed at the enterprise market and supports multiple technologies that boost its reliability and performance.

Seagate Enterprise Capacity 3.5 v4 6TB hard disk drive features 7200rpm spindle speed, 128MB cache and SAS-12Gb/s or SATA-6Gb/s interface. Maximum power consumption of the drive is 11W. Different versions of the drive support 512-byte or 4KB sector sizes. The drive employs multi-drive rotational vibration tolerance for consistent enterprise-class performance and accurate data storage in high density environments. With its advanced ramp load technology, and a humidity sensor, it delivers optimum performance even in the harshest environments.

The Enterprise Capacity 3.5 6TB hard drive will compete against Western Digital’s Ultrastar He6 6TB HDD, which features HelioSeal technology and contain helium inside. The HelioSeal allowed WD to integrate seven platters into the drive. Seagate’s new 6TB HDD is not sealed and should be easier and less expensive to manufacture. Seagate also claims that its 6TB HDD is 25 per cent faster than its rival.

“Cloud service providers across the globe are amassing terabytes of digital content each month and we expect this number to continue its aggressive growth in the coming year,” said Dave Reinsel, IDC’s group vice president for storage and semiconductors. “With this immense appetite in mind and looking at cloud architecture’s boundless demand for solid-performing and reliable drives — reaching higher capacities, like Seagate did with its new, traditional 6TB drive, should be well received by IT managers looking to meet their data center’s soaring need for storage with the performance.”

The drive is shipping now to select cloud partners and resellers globally. It will also be integrated into Seagate business and branded storage products starting this spring.

KitGuru Says: The 6TB hard drives will remain exclusive to enterprise environments for quite some time. The six-platter HDD technology is quite expensive, whereas at present there are no 2TB 3.5” platters that could enable cost-efficient hard drives with 6TB capacity.

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