Seagate Mass producing 5TB HDDs

Seagate has tried its hardest to shrink the read/write heads of hard drives even further, but with the latest 1 TB 3.5-inch platters, the company believes they've hit a physical brick wall: the head simply can't get any smaller. The same goes for the tracks on the platters, which Seagate claims are as close together as physically possible.

Seagate and Western Digital announce reduced warranties for hard drives

Seagate and Western Digital have both announced that they are slashing warranty coverage on many of their consumer-grade hard drives. Seagate drives are taking the hardest hit with the company shaving as much as four years off select drives.

In a letter to an authorized Seagate distributor, the company announced that they will begin new warranty policies effective December 31, 2011. In summary, Barracuda and Barracuda Green 3.5-inch drives and Momentus 2.5-inch drives will now ship with a one year warranty. SV35, Pipeline HD Mini and Pipeline HD products will come with a two year warranty and Momentus XT, Barracuda XT and Constellation 2 and ES.2 drives will have a three year warranty.

On the Western Digital front, the company is cutting the warranty period for Caviar Blue, Caviar Green and Scorpio Blue drives from three years to two years. Caviar Black and Scorpio Black drives will retain the same five year warranties as before. WD’s new policy goes into effect for drives shipped after January 1, 2012.

Seagate claims their warranty reduction is being implemented to be more consistent with other companies in the consumer electronics and technology industry. Reducing warranty overhead will effectively give them more money to funnel into future product development. Western Digital didn’t provide a specific reason for the reduction but explained that they will be unveiling an extended warranty offering with special pricing in the near future.

Hard drive prices in general have shot through the roof as a result of the catastrophic flooding that plagued Thailand earlier this year. Given the high prices that available drives are commanding and the reduced warranties on the horizon, now might be as good a time as any to consider a switch to a solid state drive – at least for an OS drive.

Hard drive supplies could be affected through late 2012

If you were hoping to stock up on cheap storage this holiday shopping season, you might be disappointed. Not only could therecent flooding in Thailand slow hard drive shipments through the fourth quarter of this year, supplies could be affected through the end of 2012, according to Seagate CEO Stephen Luczo.

Although Seagate's shipments are affected by the disaster, the company has been in good fortune. Two of its large factories have been spared by the floodwaters, but its business partners haven't been so lucky -- and therein lies the heart of the matter. Even though Seagate's facilities have remained out of harm's way, the company relies on parts from 130 or so suppliers, many of which are still under several feet of water.

Western Digital and Toshiba have factories in the flood zones and all told, the industry is expected to ship 50 million drives short of its 180 million target. Despite that gloomy projection, many sources claim that the crisis isn't as bad as it looks. One such article by DigiTimes yesterday says hard drive prices could begin dropping by December and that the balance between supply and demand is "not as serious as originally expected."

Some of the optimism stems from the relatively weak PC demand. Others cite the recovery of a Nidec plant that produces HDD motors. DigitTImes' sources believe we will see an "obvious improvement" in the situation by January 2012. Seagate's boss isn't so confident, however. "This is going to take a lot longer than people are assuming, until the end of 2012 at least," he told Bloomberg. "And by then, demand will have gone up."

The industry is hopeful that floodwaters will disperse by early December, so Luczo believes it's unrealistic to expect a full rebound by early or mid-2012. The situation is more complicated than just waiting for water to dissipate. Many facilities will have to replace their gear and some will be forced to relocate. Neither will be cheap and Seagate is reportedly fronting loans to some of its suppliers so they can get back on their feet.

Seagate streamlining Barracuda hard drive line

Seagate has announced that they will be streamlining their family of desktop hard drives under a single product name. The new Barracuda family increases the platter rotation speed on all models to 7200 RPM, thus eliminating slower 5400 RPM drives in the process.

Seagate was able to make the transition from the slower rotation speed thanks to a new read / write head technology that allows more data to be added to a platter. Capacities of the new Barracuda line range from 250GB up to 3TB and will first be available online through Amazon, CDW, Newegg and TigerDirect.

Seagate’s Barracuda Green drive is one such product on the chopping block. Scheduled to end production in February 2012, the company discovered that new Barracuda drives have a nearly identical power consumption profile as energy efficient hard drives but deliver much higher performance. The Barracuda XT line will also be included in the new family and reemerge as the company’s desktop solid state hybrid drive.

Technically speaking, new Barracuda drives will feature a SATA 6Gbps interface, 7200 RPM platter speed and up to 64MB of cache. Drives will continue to ship with Seagate’s SmartAlign, a technology designed to ease the transition from 512 byte to 4096 byte sector sizes as mandated by the International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association (IDEMA). 4k sector sizes allow for better error correction at higher storage densities and capacities.