Seagate Ships Hard Drives Using Next-Generation Shingled Magnetic Recording.

Xbitlabs ^ | 09/09/2013 11:05 PM | Anton Shilov

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Seagate First to Utilize Next-Gen SMR Tech for Hard Drives

Seagate Technology, a leading maker of hard disk drives and storage solutions, has announced it has shipped over one million drives using shingled magnetic recording (SMR). SMR is the next generation in storage technology and is critical for continued improvement in areal density to support global growth in cloud and mobile usage. The SMR generation of storage technology is expected to power gains of up to 25%.

“With nearly 7 billion inhabitants on earth we are creating an astounding 2.7 Zettabytes of data a year and as such are rapidly approaching the physical limits of how much can be written on a single conventional hard disk drive. With SMR technology, Seagate is on track to improve areal density by up to 25% or 1.25TB per disk, delivering hard drives with the lowest cost per gigabyte and reaching capacities of 5TB and beyond,” said Mark Re, Seagate’s chief technology officer.

The last technology transition, perpendicular recording, improved areal density by arranging the bits in a perpendicular fashion, thereby enabling narrower data tracks and read/write heads. Due to physical limitations read/write heads cannot become smaller. The most reliable option to improve areal density is to change the way data is written to the drive.

This is where SMR technology comes into play.a,

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

fyi

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Zettabyte - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The zettabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix zetta indicates the seventh power of 1000 and means 1021 in the International ...

en.wikipedia.org

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettabyte

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Try this one:

***************************************

What is zettabyte? - Definition from WhatIs.com

A zettabyte is a measure of storage capacity and is 2 to the 70th power bytes or, in decimal, approximately a thousand exabytes or a million terabytes.

searchstorage.techtarget.com

searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/zetta

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Anandtech has an article that describels the new technology:

Seagate to Ship 5TB HDD in 2014 using Shingled Magnetic Recording

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by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 9, 2013 8:00 AM EST

It's not just planar NAND that's running into physical limits lately. According to Seagate, its latest 1TB platter 3.5" drives have shrunk read/write heads as small as they can physically go. Similarly, tracks on those platters are placed as close together as physically possible. Pushing areal density is important to increase overall capacities (no one wants to see more platters per drive), but if we're at physical limits today then it's time for some architectural changes to push capacities going forward.

Seagate's solution is something it calls Shingled Magneting Recording (SMR). The process is pretty simple. Track size is traditionally defined by the size of the write heads, as they are larger than the read heads. The track width is larger than necessary from the perspective of reading data back in order to decrease the chances of reading data from adjacent tracks. Seagate's SMR exploits this reality.

[Pilsner]

I can remember buying a Zenith PC, with a 20 meg hard drive. Pure luxury to not have to switch floppy disks every time I wanted to switch programs. Never though I would ever fill up 20 whole megs.

[clamper1797]

I used to download programs from paper tape. I guess that kind of dates me huh

[BaylorDad]

Wow. The first computer I worked on was the IBM 1130 with 8K Memory and .5 Mb removable disk storage. Programming was in Fortran. Am I old or what?

[fremont_steve]

Yea we are old!

[Revolting cat!]

Obligatory: Does Zeta bytes?

[fremont_steve]

I would also point you at www.dvq.com - look for the link on the 1130. This is a site owned by a college buddy. He bought an IBM 1130 off of EBAY and had it shipped from Vienna for about $1K in shipping costs. He has some great pictures of him un-boxing the 1130.

He collects old computers and his collection of mini-computers rivals/surpasses the on-display collection of the Computer History Museum. I would provide a direct link - but it seems there is a connection problem right now?

[Safetgiver]

She has a mewl in her cleavadge ( In my best Inspector Clouseau voice.).

[BaylorDad]

Thanks. I’ll check it out. I remember them well. A couple of years ago I tossed a disk cartridge for the 1130 and several for the IBM Sys/32.

My wife says it's time.

[MCH]

A zettabyte is a measure of storage capacity and is 2 to the 70th power bytes or, in decimal, approximately a thousand exabytes or a million terabytes.

So, a zettabyte is equivalent to a kilo-exabyte or a mega-terabyte, assuming such terminology was in widespread use. It's not, but it makes sense to me :).

[Marine_Uncle]

One thing is for sure. I would have a hard time counting up to a Zeta Byte using my ten fingers. :)
These companies sure continue to push what some would view as limits.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Ernest. Lottabyte drives on the way.

[Fire_on_High]

Are you talking about Blake Patterson, by any chance?

[fremont_steve]

No - his name is Bob Rosenbloom. I’ve known him for 30+ years, i.e. since we went to college together back in the 70s. He LOVES Ebay and LOVES old computers.. 1+1=2 ;-)

Steve

[fremont_steve]

His site is up again:

Here is the link to his 1130 shots.

http://www.dvq.com/1130/1130.htm