GLG News by Hard Disk Drive Experts

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

Larger HDD Storage Capacities Coming

June 20, 2010

Analysis of:WW Record by Samsung: 320 GB on One Side of 3.5 Inch Platter | www.storagenewsletter.com

Samsung introduced a single surface 3.5-inch HDD with storage capacity of 320 GB. This implies about a 510 Gbpsi areal density, slightly less that about 530 Gbpsi being shipped on 2.5-inch HDDs. This would translate into a 2.5 TB 3.5-inch drive with four disks, eight surfaces. 3.5-inch HDDs with 3 to 4 TB storage capacity are expected later this year.

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

Seagate Introduces Improved Hybrid Drive

June 20, 2010

Analysis of:Seagate Momentus XT hybrid SSD boots into a new dimension | media.seagate.com

Seagate has introduced the Momentus XT Solid State Hybrid Drive offering a flash storage buffer to accelerate access to data from the HDD. Seagate and other HDD companies tried to introduce such hybrid HDDs back in 2007 but they failed to catch on due to issues with Microsoft Windows support. The Momentus XT does not depend upon Windows to support it, adaptive memory software detects frequently accessed data and moves it onto the faster flash memory, removing less frequently accessed content.

Jim HandyDirectorObjective Analysis

SSDs Still Hot in Enterprise Computing

June 7, 2010

Analysis of:Enterprise SSDs to soar through 2015 | www.computerworld.com

Although SSDs have failed to materialize in the PC, there is strong growth in the enterprise.  This means strengthening sales for STEC and Hitachi, Fusion-io, Plaint, and others, along with their customers IBM, EMC, NetApp, Dell, and HP, but could cause trouble for Seagate and Western Digital.

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

Many fast ways to connect computers

April 23, 2010

Light peak is a high speed optical cable that will initially be able to delivery 10 Gbps data rates but may scale to 100 Gbps within 10 years. Light peak is expected to be used to connect peripheral devices, workstations, displays, disk drives, docking stations and other devices. There are rumors that Light Peak will be available to PC manufacturers later this year and ship in 2011. It should be possible to run USB 3.0 on Light Peak as well as other protocols.

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

Strong first quarter for HDD companies

April 22, 2010

Seagate and WD gave their CQ1 2010 quarterly reports and HGST provided some guidance on their quarter. Seagate reported revenue of $3.05 B on 50.3 M units and Western Digital reported revenue of $2.6 B on 51.5 M units. HGST reported revenue of $1.46 B on somewhat more than 26 M units. For the first time WD units shipped exceeded Seagate. The rest of 2010 appears upbeat for HDD companies as demand will likely exceed manufacturing capacity resulting in good ASPs and record revenues for the HDD companies.

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

Blu-ray discs go to higher capacity with more layers

April 22, 2010

Analysis of:128 GB Blu-ray Disc format slated for release | www.computerworld.com

The Blu-ray Disc Association announced two new media specifications for Blue-ray discs for commercial and consumer applications. The BDXL is a write once or WORM format with 100 and 128 GB capacity on 4 recordable layers. There is a version of BDXL that will provide a rewritable 100 GB disc for commercial applications. A consumer version of the BDXL is expected in the next few months in some regions. The Intra-Hybrid Blu-ray Disc (IH-BD) has a single BD-ROM layer and a single BD-RE layer so users can view but not overwrite data on the ROM layer and include their own data on the RE layer—both layers provide 25 GB storage capacity.

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

NetApp moves to the clouds

April 21, 2010

Analysis of:NetApp makes major object-based storage acquisition | www.echannelline.com

NetApp is to acquire 10 year old Canadian-based cloud storage company Bycast. The Bycast offering is primarily an object-based storage product built around managing rich metadata. Bycast has been successful in the health records industry and has recently been making inroads into the media and entertainment industry. Bycast will give NetApp a path into cloud-based object and file-based storage for some key vertical markets.

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

FCoE has value for non-converged networks

March 30, 2010

Analysis of:Myth: Single FCoE Data Center network = Fewer Ports, Less Complexity and Lower Costs | www.gartner.com

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is a technology that allows managing fibre channel storage traffic over Ethernet networking. Managing Fibre Channel over Ethernet can reduce the costs of a Storage Area Network (SAN) system. Providing a less expensive way to create a Fibre Channel SAN using Ethernet technology has value to data centers even without overall network convergence

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

New generation of magnetic tape to aid in archiving

March 24, 2010

Analysis of:Production of LTO-5 Media Beginning | www.storagenewsletter.com

Several magnetic tape manufacturers have announced that LTO-5 media is now available. LTO-5 media will support 1.5 TB native capacity and up to 140 MB/s data transfer rates. The tape also supports 256 bit AES encryption per the Trusted Computing Group Specification. With the introduction of LTO-5 drives a higher capacity tape format will allow low cost storage of digital content archives

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

New combinations of home content networking point to future home virtualization

March 24, 2010

Analysis of:Consumers Can Now manage TiVo DVR Recordings from HP MediaSmart Servers | www.hp.com

HP and TiVo announced that a software application from HP called the HP MediaSmart Expander lets TiVo DVR owners manage video content on their MediaSmart Servers. The software allows copying and managing TiVo content on the HP MediaSmart Server and copying content back to the TiVo from the MediaSmart Server. This allows backup and reuse of TiVo storage without permanently deleting content. TiVo DVR recordings stored on an HP MediaSmart Server can be watched on any PC in a home.

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