Category Archives: News

While advances in PMR and SMR techniques will see a steady increase in drive capacity over the next year, HAMR is the next hard disk drive technology which needs to complete development to safeguard the future of hard disk drive manufacturers. The original prediction for the release of HAMR drives was for 2015, but as of 2017 there have no products released, despite the first demonstrations by Western Digital being made in 2013. Read more

Earlier last year Seagate released the first enterprise level 10TB hard disk drives onto the market which do not use techniques that reduce data transfer throughput. The drives as is now industry standard are helium filled and hermetically sealed, allowing for lower vibration and power requirements. Read more

From the time, Seagate acquired Maxtor hard disk technology in 2006, they slowly discontinued Maxtor branded internal hard disk drives and later external hard disk enclosures. Seagate have recently reintroduced Maxtor branded external hard disk enclosures in some countries selling value products. Read more

The launch of Seagate’s latest 15,000 rpm 2.5” form factor hard disk drive has set several new records in its class. At 900GB it is the highest capacity available for that market sector, as well as the fastest data throughput. Read more

Research into new methods of storing data has been ongoing for several decades covering many different techniques. The use of diamonds was first mooted a few years back, allowing data bits to be stored in a 3D structure. Read more

It may seem like a good idea to slowly replace the hard disk drives in a RAID array for faster versions, but this may create some unwelcome side effects. Also when planning a new RAID array and you already have some drives which you want to use it is best to buy direct matches or buy a complete set of new disks. Read more

The way in which sound waves can damage a hard disk is a little known phenomenon outside those who have researched the subject or suffered the consequences of such an incident. Sound is a pressure wave, which if loud enough can cause severe vibrations through anything it hits. Read more

Despite many news articles and data recovery sections on IT websites, the majority of customers have little or no idea just how vulnerable a hard disk drive is to failure. It has also become clear with several recent cases and online articles, that even when there are clear signs of an impending failure, they are often ignored. Read more

Despite the many warnings and reports of data lost for a variety of reasons, ranging from disasters, equipment failure, malware attacks through to security breaches and malicious damage, consumers and companies are still taking unnecessary risks. Most data being stored by companies is extremely important for their continued operation and any loss of data could result in employees being unable to work and may result in them ceasing to trade. Read more

Ever since the credit crunch in 2008 companies and organisations have been looking at ways to save money. One of the areas which has been hit is the updating of computer and storage systems, making them last for many years, rather than the usual annual or biennial upgrade cycle. Read more