GLG News by Hard Disk Drive Experts

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

Seagate enters enterprise SSD market

December 17, 2009

Analysis of:Seagate enters SSD market with Pulsar | www.pcmag.com

Seagate is the last of the big hard disk drive companies to come out with solid state drive (SSD) products. Seagate delivers over 60% of the enterprise HDDs shipped today. Seagate has introduced an enterprise SSD called Pulsar with storage capacities as high as 200 GB in a 2.5-inch form factor. The Pulsar delivers 250 MB/s sequential read and 200 MB/s sequential write performance.

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

Significant data flows support significant consumer storage

December 17, 2009

Analysis of:Americans Consumed 3.6ZB of Information in 2008 or 34GB Per Day | www.storagenewsletter.com

University of California San Diego professors James Short and Roger Bohm released a report estimating the flow of information among American consumers. The authors reported that primarily commercial information used by American consumers averaged 34 GB per day. The majority of this information was computer games and TV due to their high video content. These results support digital storage estimates for consumer applications in a 2009 report

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

HDD supply may be less than demand in 2010, ASPs could increase as a consequence

December 16, 2009

Analysis of:Supply of 3.5-inch HDDs tight until March 2010, say Taiwan PC makers | www.digitimes.com

Taiwan PC makers report that 3.5-inch drives are in short supply and may remain so until March 2010. HDD inventory for almost all products is very low coming out of 2009 supporting smaller than usual supplies in 2010. HDD companies and key component suppliers have held capital spending to a very low level in 2009, this restricts the ability to make components to meet HDD demand in 2010. Tighter supply will lead to higher ASPs leading to higher revenue and profitability in 2010

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

Google Jumping Gun on SSD Support

November 30, 2009

Analysis of:Google Chrome OS will not support hard-disk drives | www.computerworld.com

Google announced that the upcoming release of the Google Chrome operating system will not support products with hard disk drives. Google believes that solid state drives are the key to a seven-second boot time on a PC. Applications will be run from the web with the Chrome OS and only the OS and user data will be stored locally. Because of the growth in user data on computers, including netbooks, it is unlikely that SSD-only computers will be highly successful anytime soon.

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

Vast small hard drives fuel new consumer applications and smaller computers

November 8, 2009

Analysis of:Toshiba Introduces Two 1.8-Inch Hard Disk Drive Families for Both High Performance and Long Battery Life in Mobile Computing Applications | www.earthtimes.org

After its merger with Fujitsu, Toshiba is now the largest manufacturer of mobile hard disk drives (HDDs) (2.5 inch and 1.8 inch HDDs). Toshiba is also the largest manufacturer of 1.8-inch HDDs and the company has just introduced a HDD in this form factor with 320 GB storage capacity. This 2-disk 1.8-inch drive offers the highest storage capacity in such a small package and will enable more consumer and mobile computer applications

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

Optical disc drives being replaced by flash memory in computers?

November 4, 2009

Analysis of:PC makeover: slimmer profile, no DVD drive | www.mercurynews.com

Many PC makers are not including optical drives, especially for laptops and netbooks. Leaving out optical drives is being done not to reduce cost but to allow slimmer laptop and netbook computers. Flash memory with built in programs and entertainment content are now on the market in USB as well as memory card formats. Downloading content and applications has become more common, replacing one of the big uses for optical drives in computers. As flash memory $/GB declines and as write speeds for flash devices improve will these devices replace current optical disk physical distribution formats?

Jim HandyDirectorObjective Analysis

Samsung and Numonyx See PRAM-PCM as Next Winner

October 3, 2009

Analysis of:Samsung upbeat about PRAM market | www.digitimes.com

Flash memory will hit the end of its life in the next few years.Samsung and Numonyx are betting that phase-change memory, PRAM or PCM, will fill the void to become flash's successor.Other companies, Spansion, Macronix, SST, Sharp, and Hynix, have not disclosed their plans, but Intel, Toshiba, and Micron have outlined different plans.

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

Rare earth metals ban by China could impact hard disk drive production

September 22, 2009

Analysis of:World faces hi-tech crunch as China eyes ban on rare metals exports | www.telegraph.co.uk

China has been the single largest supplier country for rare earth metals such as terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, thulium, lutetium, neodymium, europium, cerium and lanthanum. China is contemplating a ban of some of these metals and restrictions on supply on many others. Many vital technologies are dependent upon rare earth metals such as motors, hard disk drives, electronics and illumination. There are deposits of rare earth ores in the North America, South Africa, and Australia but it may take years to bring these online.

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

Dual Stage Actuator HDDs appear on SATA disk drives

September 21, 2009

Analysis of:Western Digital debuts 2 TB, 7200 RPM Caviar HDDs | www.techspot.com

Western Digital announced that their new 2 TB 7,200 RPM Caviar HDDs use dual actuators. Dual (actually dual-stage) actuators provide a coarser movement of the recording head to tracks using head arms moved by a conventional voice coil motor while a finer motion is provided using a piezoelectric actuator closer to the head. Dual stage actuators add some cost to the drive and increase servo control complexity but allow higher track density recording. Dual stage actuators had only appeared in some enterprise (high performance) HDDs from Seagate and other companies in that market to this point

Thomas CoughlinPresidentCoughlin Associates

High capacity hard disk drive components proliferate

September 21, 2009

Analysis of:SDK Starts Shipments of 2.5-inch 334 GB HDD Media | www.marketwatch.com

Showa Denko, the largest independent magnetic disk manufacturer, has started shipping 2.5-inch hard disks with 334 GB capacity. This disk formats are those used in laptop computers and smaller external hard disk drives (especially where power is off the same USB interface as the data transfer). The storage capacity areal density for these products is greater than 500 Gbpsi, a new record.

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