While magnetic-based storage is still the popular one today, it's due to capacity and cost. Most of us would envision that solid state drives will be the one storing our bits in our next-generation rigs – both for business and pleasure – and Seagate today formally announced its jump into the SSD market.
Seagate new SSD, dubbed the Pulsar drive, the first product in its new enterprise SSD family. Designed for enterprise blade and general server applications, the Pulsar drive uses single-level cell (SLC) technology, is available in capacities up to 200 GB, and is built in a 2.5-inch small form factor with a SATA interface. The drive can achieve a peak performance of up to 30,000 read IOPS and 25,000 write IOPS, 240MB/sec. sequential read and 200 MB/sec. sequential write.
“Seagate is optimistic about the enterprise SSD opportunity and views the product category as enabling expansion of the overall storage market for both SSDs and HDDs,” said Dave Mosley, Seagate executive vice president, Sales, Marketing, and Product Line Management.
While Seagate does offer many of its products for the consumer space, the company's announcement today is focused on a product for enterprises. Businesses looking to move over to SSD are more likely to select a new technology from an existing storage supplier rather than a flash memory newcomer – something that Seagate is betting on.
“With its well-established OEM and eco-system relationships and a long history of serving global storage OEMs, Seagate is in a unique position to fortify its leading enterprise storage position with its entry into the enterprise solid state storage market,” said Dave Reinsel, vice president of research firm IDC.
For enterprise peace of mind, Seagate's Pulsar SSD provides its customers a 0.44 percent annualized failure rate with a five-year limited warranty.
Seagate shipped Pulsar units to select OEMs in September 2009 and is currently available to OEM customers for qualification.
For the rest of us consumers, we asked Seagate if it had plans for an SSD line for enthusiasts' personal systems. While the company remained tight lipped on future products, Seagate did tell Tom's Hardware that Pulsar is just the first of many solid state drives to come.
