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Seagate says it will target enterprise customers with its first SSD

Seagate doesn’t currently have any drives in the SSD market. Seagate currently is one of the largest makers of traditional hard drives and while it foresees a time when the solid state drive (SSD) is a better value than traditional HDDs; that time is not now.

Seagate announced that next year it will double its highest capacity traditional HDD to 2TB and will introduce its first SSD. CEO Bill Watkins says Seagate will first target enterprise customers with its SSDs where the benefits of lower power consumption and faster data access will be most welcome. The enterprise environment will also be willing to pay the premium SSDs will still demand whereas the majority of the consumer market is not willing to pay the premium at this time says Seagate.

PC World quotes Watkins saying, “SSDs are not price-competitive yet.” The cost per gigabyte for SSDs isn’t expected to come down for several years. Watkins believes that SSDs will become a focus for Seagate when the cost per gigabyte of SSD storage is around $0.10.

Currently, the cost per gigabyte for the average SSD is about $3.58 per gigabyte according to Krishna Chander, an analyst at iSuppli. There are problems with SSDs to be tackled over the next few years other than price. The typical SSD still has a storage capacity too low for most users and the SSD lifespan is short compared to a traditional HDD.

The answer to the problem of durability may lie in using the SSD for data reading and fast access to commonly used files and having less frequently used stuff moved off to a HDD for more permanent storage according to some. Despite the fact that Seagate doesn’t currently sell SSDs, it does own several patents that cover technology currently used in many SSDs on the market.

In April 2008 Seagate announced it was going to begin filing patent infringement suits against SSD makers who were using its patented technology in their products with the first suit filed against STEC.

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Cost per GB
By Alexstarfire on 5/30/2008 3:08:55 PM , Rating: 2
Considering that the cost per GB of a HDD hasn't gotten below $.20 without some kind of sale I think it's going to be a long time till Seagate starts making SSDs if they are truly going to wait till the cost for GB to come down to $.10 for it. I'd almost guarantee that they are going to have SSDs on the market before the cost per GB gets that low though.




RE: Cost per GB
By ksherman on 5/30/2008 3:11:13 PM , Rating: 2
I was just noticing the same thing! That is quite an outrageous statement.


RE: Cost per GB
By rudy on 5/30/2008 3:53:23 PM , Rating: 2
No it's not if you extrapolate the price per GB of a hard drive at say 30 cents now to what it will be per GB in several years it makes sense that it should be around 10 cents by that time a gigabyte wont be much data.


RE: Cost per GB
By dragonbif on 5/30/2008 8:29:44 PM , Rating: 1
I don’t know, I just went to newegg and looked at WD 640GB HD and it was $99.99 (.25/G) and it was not on sale. It is one of the high performing HD in the 500-750GB range. It is true that when you get into the 1TB range it gets to .20/GB but that will change when the 1.5+TB drives start coming out. New stuff just costs more.


RE: Cost per GB
By dragonbif on 5/30/2008 8:30:27 PM , Rating: 3
ACK sorry the .25/G should be .15/GB.


RE: Cost per GB
By winterspan on 5/31/2008 4:15:19 AM , Rating: 2
Yep. waiting till $0.10/GB to focus on SSDs is such crap.

Evan at $1-1.50 per GB for a fast 2.5" SSD would be incredible for premium laptops, considering the largest 2.5" 7200RPM drive you can get is 300GB. You could get a 256GB SSD for $250. Better yet, high-end/enthusiast users would readily add $400-500 on to the price of a mobile workstation/gaming machine for a 512GB SSD. For god sakes, people are paying almost $1,000 for the 64GB SSD upgrade in the Macbook Air, and $700 for the 64GB upgrade in Dell XPS laptops. If you could get 4x the size of that for 1/4 the price, people would be all over that --- even 1-2 years down the road.


RE: Cost per GB
By stryfe on 5/30/2008 3:14:09 PM , Rating: 5
They didn't say they wouldn't have SSDs on the market before the cost per GB was $0.10, they said that was the point at which SSDs would become a focus for the company.


RE: Cost per GB
By Icelight on 5/30/2008 3:48:52 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
Considering that the cost per GB of a HDD hasn't gotten below $.20 without some kind of sale


Yes, but a business typically does not sell a product for the same amount it costs to manufacture it.


RE: Cost per GB
By Oregonian2 on 5/30/2008 7:07:02 PM , Rating: 3
I think you've cost and price equated. They're not the same.


RE: Cost per GB
By HexiumVII on 5/30/08, Rating: 0
RE: Cost per GB
By Pryde on 5/30/2008 9:13:38 PM , Rating: 4
Even if the cost of SSD are 3x the price of HDD in the Next few years they are going to get much faster, more reliable and in much higher density than HDD. Not to mention the low access time makes them great for a RAID array.


RE: Cost per GB
By ChefJoe on 5/31/2008 8:47:10 PM , Rating: 2
Call me when I can get a 15-20 Gig SSD for about $100 . I'd love to keep that as my boot drive and have a standard spinning platter HD for real storage duty.

You hear that Seagate... no $500 32 gig SSD drives, give me a small, cheap one.


RE: Cost per GB
By Silver2k7 on 6/2/2008 5:51:52 AM , Rating: 1
15-20Gb thats a bit risky.. my vista is 15Gb, and i prefer to have installed programs on the boot disc.. they need to be reinstalled if you format it anyway so why not have it on the same disc.

Im using about 170Gb on C: right now.. and using a 500Gb hdd just to be on the safe side.. its good to have some free space on the OS drive too.. the minimum I would consider is probably 300Gb.


RE: Cost per GB
By larson0699 on 6/3/08, Rating: -1
RE: Cost per GB
By Regs on 6/2/2008 12:39:45 PM , Rating: 2
Hard Drives have been the slowest items in our computers since the invention of the CDROM. It's about time they cought up.


RE: Cost per GB
By rippleyaliens on 5/30/2008 9:55:38 PM , Rating: 3
You yonger folks with this 20c per get..
10 years ago, a 1,6 gb WD drive was $300
8MB dimms were $250
8x cd rom was the craze..
IE a p150 system , with 15mb vram cards, 1.6 GB drive, 8mb ram, cost $2500- and were selling like hot plates.
AAND that system, sill didnt run win95 as fast as what people wanted... a CDR- form hp, 1x/2s was $999
CDR mdia was $8 ea.

Same $2500 today buys something completely different.

Just like everything, time, will drop the prices substantially. Newer stuff hits all the time, and prirces drop accordingly. Just takes time to ripple down to people who arent willing to pay for performance.. gotta pay to play


RE: Cost per GB
By Alexstarfire on 5/31/2008 7:30:12 AM , Rating: 2
I think you mean 15 years ago. 10 years ago was 1998 and they had 52x CD burners by then.


RE: Cost per GB
By Zirconium on 5/31/2008 8:39:36 AM , Rating: 5
Shh... don't argue with grampa. He's senile. Otherwise he'll tell you about his childhood.


RE: Cost per GB
By Screwballl on 5/31/2008 11:04:16 AM , Rating: 5
in my day we watched the space shuttle explode on TV... I remember glass soda/beer bottles that needed a metal thing to take the lid off... I remember when you had to answer the phone to find out who is calling, and if you were not home then they just tried calling you later... I remember having to rewind for a minute or two if you wanted to hear the song again... I remember Johnny Carson and seeing Jay Leno without grey hair... I remember popcorn on the stove... I remember "Where's the Beef?", "I'd walk a mile for a Camel", or "de plane, Boss, de plane."... I remember Styrofoam at McDonalds... I remember worrying about Jaws when I went swimming in the local lakes (in South Dakota)... I remember having to actually work for my first car, buy it myself and keep a job to maintain payments and insurance all while I was still going to high school all day from 7AM until 4PM then usually worked until 10 or 11PM... I remember the black and white Gameboy... I remember Colecovision...

wait what was I saying???


RE: Cost per GB
By arturus on 6/2/2008 11:55:42 AM , Rating: 2
I remember software that stated,

Hard Drive recommended

Now that's old.

For those too young to have witnessed this, software loaded from a floppy disk.


RE: Cost per GB
By Crassus on 6/6/2008 2:29:22 PM , Rating: 2
I remember the command to format a floppy on a C64. I remember installing Windows 3.0 and DOS 5.0 and even Windows 95 from floppies. I remember upgrading RAM from 1 MB to 2MB so color print jobs would take less than 45 min to spool. I remember 8bit ISA cards. And I still have my old SoundBlaster Pro somewhere.


RE: Cost per GB