Seagate has really been pushing the envelope lately in the data storage sector. First they counter Western Digital’s helium 6TB drives by jam-packing existing HDD tech to match WD’s offer. Now, they’re shipping 8TB HDDs out to select customers, and 10 terabyte drives are boasted ‘soon’. Seagate’s vice president of marketing, Scott Horn, claims that this push for higher storage capacity comes from a need for Seagate to rise to the challenges of accommodating data centers and other high-demand storage areas. Horn postulates, “”Seagate is poised to address this challenge by offering the world’s first 8TB HDD, a ground-breaking new solution for meeting the increased capacities needed to support the demand for high capacity storage in a world bursting with digital creation, consumption and long-term storage.”
Well, Mr. Horn, if you’re selling we’re buying. High capacity HDDs are becoming just as important for home users as they are for business, with the proliferation of in-home media streaming, massive digital gaming libraries, and the like. It’s also great that the Seagate HDDs are power-efficient as well. Although HDDs typically consume little power on their own, when they are in a massive array the power bill does tend to skyrocket.
In any case, we can only hope for two things. One, that Seagate expands ‘select customers’ to include ‘everyone’ in a timely fashion. Two, that the rumored 10TB HDDs don’t get here too soon and make us regret our 8TB HDDs that we’ve already bought.
