In July last year, Seagate announced the first 10-terabyte helium-based hard drives for the general consumer market. Last January, it said it would need less than 18 months to reach 16 terabytes, and now the company has just moved up the first rung. The Enterprise Capacity series in 3.5-inch format now includes 12-terabyte drives with SATA and SAS interfaces, a maximum transfer rate exceeding 260 megabytes per second, and a five-year warranty.
The business world always eagerly awaits each new capacity jump in hard drives. Greater density per unit translates into more available space per server and greater efficiency. I understand that for some users, a change of one or two terabytes may not seem like a big deal, but if we shift the scales, achieving with five hard drives what previously took six is very important. That is exactly the mechanics of the two hard drive manufacturers, Seagate and Western Digital. The benefits to end users are welcome from every point of view, but the real tour de force lies in satisfying the demands of large companies.
Seagate's 12TB Enterprise Capacity Drives
The latest expression from Seagate is its new 12-terabyte hard drive under the Enterprise Capacity series, which also represents its second generation of helium-based units. Seagate managed to fit eight platters inside this drive while maintaining or even reducing energy consumption during activity. Like the previous version, the 12-terabyte drives still spin at 7,200 RPM and feature a 256 MB cache. The drives are divided into twelve specific models depending on the customer's needs (for example, sector size or integrated encryption). The maximum sustained transfer reaches 261 megabytes per second, and the mean time between failures remains fixed at 2.5 million hours.
Price and Availability
Unfortunately, Seagate did not provide further details on availability and pricing, but it did confirm that the warranty will be five years. The previous series of Enterprise Capacity cost $490 for 10 TB in SATA interface and $505 for the SAS variant. Logic suggests that the new 12-terabyte drives will not be far off from those prices.
AnandTech
