Seagate to make flash-based hard drives

Seagate Technology, the number one maker of magnetic hard drives, is going to make hard drives based around flash memory too, says CEO Bill Watkins.

"We are going to have a solid state drive, probably for enterprise first," he said during an interview on Wednesday. "We think we can make these drives better."

Seagate's decision is a significant turning point in the religious war in the storage market. The flash versus magnetic debate has been issue No. 1 in the storage world for the past two years. Magnetic hard drives have been a crucial component for servers, PCs and notebooks for years. Magnetic hard drives cost far less in terms of cost per gigabyte and typically hold more data than flash devices. At CompUSA, a 500GB desktop drive on sale sells for $109, or as much as two 4GB flash drives. The price disparity exists at wholesale too.

Flash memory makers, however, have been increasing the density of their products and lowering the price. In turn, flash has managed to chase magnetic hard drives out of the MP3 player market. Notebooks with flash drives began appearing this year. Some flash manufacturers say blade servers are next. Flash consumes less energy, say proponents, is more reliable and faster at retrieving data.

Rather than try to fight the trend, Seagate is going to cover all the bases. Besides, the storage component--flash chips or magnetic platters--are only one component of a drive, said Watkins. There are also chips, boards and lots of software.

"This has a million lines of code in it," Watkins said, holding up a hard drive. "The million lines of code make it a solution."

The flash-based notebooks on the market today, he said, are "ten years behind."

Seagate doesn't have flash-based drives in the wings at the moment. Right now, the Scotts Valley-based company is looking for a company to sell it flash chips.

Samsung is the number one producer of NAND flash in the world, but Samsung also sells hard drives. Still, there are many other vendors, including Micron Technologies, which don't make their own drives.

Flash drives will likely never dominate the storage market. There's just too much data out there, said Watkins. But flash drives might account for 7 or so percent of the drive market, he speculated.

The opportunity for flash drives will mostly be in the 400GB to 500GB space a few years from now. Currently, 64GB flashed-based drives for notebooks cost a few hundred dollars.

In 2012, 500GB might cost $50 while 50GB of flash might sell for the same, he said.

Seagate currently makes hybrid drives, which are regular magnetic drives with some flash included.

Interestingly, Seagate once owned a big piece of flash giant SanDisk.

[Infiniteblue]

500 G is a Joke in 2012

How can I take Seagate seriously if they think we'll be paying $50 for only 500G in 2012? In 2012 we'll pay $50 for at least a terabyte drive.

[Hoser McMoose]

500G probably lots for most in 2012

I know for me personally I've found that my requirements for hard disk space have not increased nearly as fast as capacities have been increase for the past 10 years. I used to buy at about the 1/2 maximum capacity (ie when 1GB drives were the biggest available I would buy a 512MB), but now I buy at more like the 1/4 mark or less (ie 200GB drives when the max now is 1GB). In 5 years I'll probably need a lower percentage still.

So in 2012 the biggest drives out there will probably something like 4 terabytes, but I'll probably only need 500GB. If it comes down to a 500GB fast flash drive vs. a 1TB slower magnetic drive for the same price, I'm gonna be getting the flash drive.

I don't think I'm abnormal in this regard either. I download large files, have lots of programs, games, etc. My disk usage isn't the most intensive out there, but probably in line with 50%+ of computer users, and that's at home! At the office I use even less disk space (I think I've got an 80GB drive that isn't even half full since any important stuff gets stored to the network RAID array with it's regular backups).

[shane--2008]

flash will never replace platters

and novell will never be replaced in the server room, the GUI
interface will never matter, nobody will ever need more than 640k,
linux will never be a viable option, and Apple will never matter in
the computer world again.

....have we STILL not learned that never is a long time?

and in computer years no less.

[vened]

Dude...get your facts straight

First off, there already are SSD based notebooks on the market made by Dell and Sony, both with Sandisk SSD flash drives. Second, a 500GB hard drive you start out saying costs $109 but in 2012 you think it will cost $50? Try more like $5 for a magnetic and about $100 for the flash drive. And you can basically throw out the magnetic drive because its like using a freaking 8-track player compared to a iPod NANO with flash inside.

[vened]

Follow-up

Didn't mean to be so harsh actually. Thought you wrote a good story, but the CEO of Seagate is kidding himself if he thinks he can compete with Sandisk in the flash arena. Building a flash controller is nothing like a platter controller. And furthermore, I've read that a lot of enterprise guys will only stripe about 10% of the outer edge of a magnetic disk for speed and reliability reasons - which makes the 10:1 differential between flash and magnetic cost just about a moot point to begin already today...

[limefan913]

Until Flash can catch up to Magnetic in compacity...

Its not a competitor in my eyes. I need my 1TB of storage... actually more. Can flash give me that? Not even close.

And your comparison is very flawed. Other than speed differences that the average user won't notice, there's no difference in the quality of the storage. It still holds the same data, at the same quality, except magnetic still holds more.

Thus why the iPod video is still hard disk based.. with 80GB. Can flash even do that? Not without tripling the price of the product.

[intrepi]

I agree but take a pass on referring to anyone as "Dude"

Personally, I tend to agree with you on all counts but I really take offense to you replying to anyone as "Dude" as you simply don't know if he/she is one or not. Case and point, know who you are replying to or take a pass on making references to them with whatever adjective or personal noun, pronoun you might have in mind.

[leemcabee]

500gb flash drives

Some of the responses i've read are ludicrous. If you exstrapalate out inflation the flash drives will cost exactly what the article says it will

[Steph0314]

Millions of Line of Code???

Is he talking about the program to operated the magnetic base hard drive or what will be the flash base hard drive?
Neither needs that much programming.

[srinivasanth]

Flash vs platter

Solid state should of course score over revolving mechanism in terms of reliability and life. Primafacie the cost of manufacturing flash drives appear to hold tremendous potential for a crash. What is likely is that Flash costs and prices would nosedive in 4 or 5 years and be a formidable competitor to the platters; the latter may find use exclusively in scientific applications while flash is likely to be the ubiquitous option for most of the personal computers and laptops.

[hubbertsmith]

a million lines of code ... why?

a million lines of code sounds more like bloatware than "a solution" ...
exactly what type of "solution" are we talking about? what precisely are the customer benefits of this "solution"? does the "solution" benefit customers or does the "solution" benefit seagate?