SSHD adoption | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net KitGuru.net - Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards Tue, 14 Jul 2015 10:59:32 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://www.kitguru.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/cropped-KITGURU-Light-Background-SQUARE2-32x32.png SSHD adoption | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net 32 32 Western Digital quietly rolls-out new WD Blue SSHDs with 8GB NAND cache https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/western-digital-quietly-rolls-out-new-wd-blue-sshds-with-8gb-nand-cache/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/western-digital-quietly-rolls-out-new-wd-blue-sshds-with-8gb-nand-cache/#comments Tue, 14 Jul 2015 01:42:16 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=258815 Western Digital has quietly started to sell its new WD Blue solid-state hybrid drives with ‘self-learning’ NAND flash cache. The drives are designed to offer solid-state drive-like performance in select applications, but are not expected to be too expensive since they belong to WD’s mainstream family of products. Initially Western Digital will offer two new-generation …

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Western Digital has quietly started to sell its new WD Blue solid-state hybrid drives with ‘self-learning’ NAND flash cache. The drives are designed to offer solid-state drive-like performance in select applications, but are not expected to be too expensive since they belong to WD’s mainstream family of products.

Initially Western Digital will offer two new-generation WD Blue SSHD models: the WD40E31X drive with 4TB capacity in 3.5” form-factor for desktops as well as the WD10J31X drive with 1TB capacity in 2.5” form-factor for laptops. The solid-state hybrid drives feature 5400rpm spindle speed, Serial ATA-6Gb/s interface, 8GB of intelligent multi-level-cell NAND flash cache, 64MB DRAM cache and so on.

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The WD Blue SSHDs automatically determine frequently used LBA sectors of their magnetic media and cache them in the NAND flash memory buffer, significantly speeding up boot times of Windows and load times of frequently used applications. Western Digital claims that its WD Blue SSHDs perform up to four to five times faster than traditional 5400rpm HDDs, based on PCMark Vantage.

The WD Blue hard disk drives are usually positioned for mainstream PCs and users, who are not seeking maximum performance. For enthusiasts, Western Digital offers WD Black HDDs and hybrid drive. In fact, the WD Black² is essentially a 1TB hard drive and a 120GB solid-state drive in one 2.5”/9.5mm form-factor package. The drive connects to the host controller using a single Serial ATA-6Gb/s interface and appears as one storage device with two partitions, allowing users to manually select which storage media – NAND flash or magnetic – to use.

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Even though the new WD Blue solid-state hybrid drives will not perform like SSDs or the WD Black2, they should combine vast amount of storage space with increased performance in select applications at a moderate cost, something that mainstream users and PC makers need.

The new WD Blue SSHDs feature rather premium pricing. In the U.K., the 4TB WD40E31X costs £142.78, whereas the 1TB WD10J31X is listed for £71.84. In the U.S., the new SSHDs cost $179 and $99 for 4TB and 1TB models, respectively. While the prices are slightly higher compared to 7200rpm HDDs, it should be noted that WD's new SSHDs feature 5400rpm spindle speed.

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KitGuru Says: Hybrid drives have not really become popular among performance enthusiasts, who prefer solid-state drives. Therefore, offering SSHDs at a small price-premium to mainstream customers may make a lot of sense.

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Seagate: Sales of solid-state hybrid drives suddenly pick up https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/seagate-sales-of-solid-state-hybrid-drives-suddenly-pick-up/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/seagate-sales-of-solid-state-hybrid-drives-suddenly-pick-up/#comments Tue, 28 Oct 2014 23:59:45 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=219026 Seagate Technology said this week that sales of its solid-state hybrid drives started to rapidly grow in the recent months. The company expects shipments of SSHD products to remain strong in the current quarter, which may be an indicator that at least some of the company’s customers are deploying hybrid storage devices. In the prepared …

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Seagate Technology said this week that sales of its solid-state hybrid drives started to rapidly grow in the recent months. The company expects shipments of SSHD products to remain strong in the current quarter, which may be an indicator that at least some of the company’s customers are deploying hybrid storage devices.

In the prepared remarks about Seagate’s financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2015, which ended on the 3rd of October, 2014, Steven Luczo, chief executive officer of Seagate, said that shipments of the company's SSHDs totaled over 12 million of units. Back in mid-September the company said that life-to-date shipments of its hybrid drives hit 10 million units milestone.

“We saw higher than expected sales of our client hybrid drives this quarter and we are planning for sequential growth again in the December quarter,” said Mr. Luczo during a quarterly conference call with investors and financial analysts. “To-date we have sold over 12 million hybrids reflecting the growing interest in hybrid in the marketplace.”

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Seagate introduced its first SSHD in 2010 (although it started to experiment with hybrid drives in 2007) and currently it ships third-generation solid-state hybrid drives. While in select cases solid-state hybrid drives offer performance comparable to that of solid-state drives, they cannot offer such levels of performance all the time. As a result, those, who want high performance, prefer SSDs; whereas those, who need maximum capacity, prefer traditional hard disk drives.

While Seagate remains optimistic about the future of SSHDs, it should be noted that in the coming years the company will significantly increase its investments in pure SSDs now that it has its own controllers for solid-state drives. Given the fact that the price of NAND flash is continuously decreasing, it is logical to expect popularity of solid-state drives to increase.

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KitGuru Says: It is remarkable that it took Seagate four years to ship 10 million of SSHDs and just less than a month to ship another two million units. Looks like a PC maker decided to use hybrid storage devices in order to gain a competitive advantage over rivals… 

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Seagate ships its 10 millionth solid-state hybrid drive https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/seagate-ships-its-10-millionth-solid-state-hybrid-drive/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/seagate-ships-its-10-millionth-solid-state-hybrid-drive/#respond Wed, 10 Sep 2014 22:54:50 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=211223 Seagate Technology on Wednesday announced that it has shipped its 10 millionth solid-state hybrid drive. While the number is rather respectable, it just proves that hybrid drives that combine rotating media and large NAND flash cache are not really popular among end-users. Seagate introduced its first SSHD in 2010 (although it started to experiment with hybrid …

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Seagate Technology on Wednesday announced that it has shipped its 10 millionth solid-state hybrid drive. While the number is rather respectable, it just proves that hybrid drives that combine rotating media and large NAND flash cache are not really popular among end-users.

Seagate introduced its first SSHD in 2010 (although it started to experiment with hybrid drives in 2007) and currently it ships third-generation solid-state hybrid drives. While in select cases solid-state hybrid drives offer performance comparable to that of solid-state drives, they cannot offer such levels of performance all the time. As a result, those, who want high performance, prefer SSDs; whereas those, who need maximum capacity, prefer traditional hard disk drives.

While 10 million of SSHDs that were shipped throughout four years is clearly not a lot, Seagate hopes that going forward demand for such storage solutions will increase. According to IDC, in the recent years the demand for SSHDs did increase significantly.

“Solid state hybrid drives continue to be an economical alternative to pure SSDs for PC users seeking to improve PC system responsiveness. This dynamic is being translated into an industry growth rate exceeding 400% from Seagate's FY2013 to FY2014,” said Dave Reinsel, IDC's group vice president for storage and semiconductors. “Seagate is in a strong position to capitalize on this growth given its leadership position and favorable supply chain dynamics.”

seagate_momentus_xt_vertical_1

While Seagate remains optimistic about the future of SSHDs, it should be noted that in the coming years the company will significantly increase its investments in pure SSDs now that it has its own controllers for solid-state drives. On the other hand, thanks to its own SSD controller IP, Seagate could also develop ultimate hybrid storage solutions combining NAND flash and rotating media.

“We are seeing growing demand for our SSHDs from the world's leading PC manufacturers,” said Scott Horn, vice president of global marketing, Seagate. “Hybrid technology is proving to be what we always thought it would be – the ultimate combination of high-performance and capacity needs with the price point that's right for both budget constrained IT organizations and consumers.”

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KitGuru Says: The low popularity of SSHDs so far has been conditioned by multiple factors, including the wrong balance of price, performance and capacity. Once the balance gets better, solid-state hybrid drives could become popular among consumers.

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WD: demand for SSHDs remains low, but things are improving https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/wd-demand-for-hybrid-sshd-remains-low-but-things-are-improving/ https://www.kitguru.net/components/hard-drives/anton-shilov/wd-demand-for-hybrid-sshd-remains-low-but-things-are-improving/#comments Fri, 01 Aug 2014 17:46:41 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=205637 Solid-state hybrid drives (SSHD) – hybrid storage solutions featuring NAND flash and rotating media – promise to offer the best of two worlds: performance of solid-state drives and capacities of hard disk drives. Unfortunately, in many cases SSHDs just compromise both performance and storage capacities. As a consequence, they are not really popular. Western Digital …

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Solid-state hybrid drives (SSHD) – hybrid storage solutions featuring NAND flash and rotating media – promise to offer the best of two worlds: performance of solid-state drives and capacities of hard disk drives. Unfortunately, in many cases SSHDs just compromise both performance and storage capacities. As a consequence, they are not really popular.

Western Digital Corp., which introduced its first solid-state hybrid drives late last year, said this week that demand for these devices is pretty low. The company did not explain the exact reasons behind low demand for its WD Black² dual drive solutions (which are not hybrid drives by definition of Seagate Momentus XT to Toshiba's SSHD , but still feature two types of storage technologies), but noted that they have to compete against fully-fledged solid-state drives, which are already popular on the market, to gain market share.

“[Hybrids] remain a relatively small piece of our business, or low volumes from our perspective,” said Stephen Milligan, chief executive officer of Western Digital, during this week’s conference call with financial analysts and investors. “We began to see some encouraging signs from our perspective in terms of the acceptance or utilization of hybrid drives, albeit small, still remaining small volumes.”

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At present WD offers only one hybrid storage solution, the WD Black², which did not get a lot of good reviews. The WD Black2 is essentially a 1TB hard drive and a 120GB solid-state drive in one 2.5”/9.5mm form-factor package. The drive connects to the host controller using a single Serial ATA-6Gb/s interface and appears as one storage device with two partitions. The SSD of the WD Black² provides up to 350MB/s read and up to 140MB/s write speed, which is very low performance level by today’s SSD standards. While the Black² is not a performance champ, it costs quite a lot ($209 in the U.S., £158 in the U.K.).

But while the WD Black² is a mixed bag in general, WD hopes that either it, or its successor, will gain traction sometimes in 2015. Unfortunately, the CEO of the company has no idea whether SSHDs will be able to truly compete against SSDs where performance matters.

“We should see increasing volumes [of hybrids] as we move through the back half of the year,” said Mr. Milligan. “I think it is a little bit too early to say how much that will stem the acceptance of pure SSDs in the PC space. […] We will have to see how these new products that our customers are introducing are received in the end-user market.”

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KitGuru Says: In a bid to be truly popular, SSHDs (or dual drives) like the WD Black² should offer leading-edge SSD performance, decent HDD capacities, allow users to choose where to install new programs and feature certain hidden performance-boosting algorithms that will make them better than traditional hard drives when the rotating media is used. At present SSHDs are just full of too many compromises.

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