Why Will Seagate Kill Off Its 7200RPM Notebook HDDs? It's Going All-Hybrid
This weekend, we posted news that Seagate is discontinuing its 7200RPM notebook hard drives, which is a move that signaled more of a focus on flash-based storage solutions over spinning magnetic disks. As it turns out, Seagate isn’t abandoning HDDs in favor of SSDs--the company is going all-hybrid.
Seagate announced the Seagate Laptop SSHD (“solid state hybrid drive”), slim 7mm Seagate Laptop Thin SSHD, and the a desktop version, the Seagate Desktop SSHD. Flash has clearly been the superior alternative to spinning magnetic disk-based consumer storage for a long time, but cost has lingered as a hindrance to adoption.
Meet the Seagate SSHD Family
However, Seagate is pitching these new hybrid drives as delivering near-SSD performance but at a sharply reduced cost (about on par with standard hard drive prices) and with far larger capacities. Indeed, the Laptop SSHD will be available at up to 1TB; the Laptop Thin SSHD at 500GB; and the Desktop SSHD at up to 2TB with 8GB of NAND flash on board.
Seagate has developed a clever tweener option between relatively slow but inexpensive HDDs and relatively fast but pricey SSDs; how long that market will exist before dropping flash prices will lead to SSDs completely taking over remains to be seen, but for now, Seagate should live comfortably in the niche it’s carved out for itself.
Seagate announced the Seagate Laptop SSHD (“solid state hybrid drive”), slim 7mm Seagate Laptop Thin SSHD, and the a desktop version, the Seagate Desktop SSHD. Flash has clearly been the superior alternative to spinning magnetic disk-based consumer storage for a long time, but cost has lingered as a hindrance to adoption.
Meet the Seagate SSHD Family
However, Seagate is pitching these new hybrid drives as delivering near-SSD performance but at a sharply reduced cost (about on par with standard hard drive prices) and with far larger capacities. Indeed, the Laptop SSHD will be available at up to 1TB; the Laptop Thin SSHD at 500GB; and the Desktop SSHD at up to 2TB with 8GB of NAND flash on board.
Seagate has developed a clever tweener option between relatively slow but inexpensive HDDs and relatively fast but pricey SSDs; how long that market will exist before dropping flash prices will lead to SSDs completely taking over remains to be seen, but for now, Seagate should live comfortably in the niche it’s carved out for itself.
