DailyTech - Seagate Launches Mobile Hard Drives for Extreme Environments

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Hardware Seagate Launches Mobile Hard Drives for Extreme Environments
Purav Sanghani - June 21, 2007 4:36 AM

18 comment(s) - last by highlandsun.. on Jun 24 at 12:21 AM

Seagate EE25 Series 5400.2

Seagate to offer second generation high tolerance mobile hard drives for extreme operating conditions

Soon after Seagate Technology began shipping its first 1TB hard disk drive offering, it launched a new mobile hard disk drive built for extreme conditions. Seagate Technology is offering the 2.5-inch EE25 Series 5400.2 mobile disk drive at up to 80GB in capacity and is geared towards those who require durability and reliability in the most hostile conditions.

With a top capacity of 80GB the EE25.2 Series 5400.2 features a high tolerance of extreme temperature conditions, vibrations, humidity, shock, and not-so-ordinary altitudes. Capacities of 30GB, 40GB, and 60GB will also be available in both PATA and SATA interfaces.

To put the tolerance levels in numbers, the EE25.2 Series 5400.2 drives can withstand temperatures in the -30 to +85 degrees Celsius range, humidity levels of 90%, and operate at up to 16,400 feet above sea level. The drives will also tolerate vibrations of 150 Gs at 11 milliseconds. Additionally, Seagate backs these drives by its 5-year warranty which makes this series that much more cost-effective.

Pricing information has not yet been released but we can bet these drives will be aimed at those who are willing to pay for the durability of a tank.

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Is there a market for that ?

By kalak on 6/21/2007 11:13:58 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
Over Half of Notebooks to Use Flash by Q4 2009

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=7137

So, I believe that's too late for that type of product. We have 30GB+ flash drives now, so we will not need this HDs "built for extreme conditions". Flash will be better AND cheaper.

RE: Is there a market for that ?

By mindless1 on 6/21/2007 12:20:12 PM , Rating: 2

Actually a laptop is not what I'd call an extreme environment at all, since so many other parts (in the typical models) are still susceptible to these factors, beyond a bit more shock tolerance.

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RE: Is there a market for that ?

By kalak on 6/21/2007 3:09:55 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
Actually a laptop is not what I'd call an extreme environment at all

I'm not saying that....

I'm just saying that already exists a similar product (SSD), better and cheaper.

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RE: Is there a market for that ?

By Lord 666 on 6/21/2007 8:55:37 PM , Rating: 3

Seems that NASA and other space agencies will disagree with you. Take a look at these pictures; not only is there a laptop but an G4 ipod being used.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/digital-music/ipod-in-o...

and

http://www.capcomespace.net/dossiers/espace_US/shu...

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RE: Is there a market for that ?

By Samus on 6/21/2007 3:05:52 PM , Rating: 2

It helps magnetic technology compete with flash. Hard disks are still dramatically faster and cheaper. If they can make them as reliable (resistance to shock and environmental anomoly's)

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RE: Is there a market for that ?

By TomZ on 6/21/2007 5:29:43 PM , Rating: 2

Not sure about the "dramatically faster" part.

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RE: Is there a market for that ?

By Devo2007 on 6/21/2007 10:18:53 PM , Rating: 2

In terms of actual read/write speeds, hard drives are noticeably faster than flash. Currently, flash memory only holds an advantage when it comes to latency (access time).

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RE: Is there a market for that ?

By TomZ on 6/21/2007 11:01:01 PM , Rating: 2

The 64GB Samsung SSD mobile drive that was recently announced had read and write transfer rates that exceeded that of the fastest mobile drives available. So if you compare apples-to-apples, i.e., mobile drives to mobile drives, the newer flash drives are faster.

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RE: Is there a market for that ?

By Invincible on 6/22/2007 4:28:06 PM , Rating: 2

When I first saw the headline I immediately thought of a CarPC application. I myself have plans to build one and was going to opt for a SSD. Now it appears I have options. I suppose for me it will come down to price. If these enter the market under the price of SDD drives when I want to buy - AND offer slightly higher capacities - I'll buy in.

Operation down to -30 degrees is interesting as up here in Canada, that happens frequently enough. I have not looked to see what "acceptable operating conditions" are for SSDs. Also, how will the warranties compare?

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wouldn't SSD be better choice?

By Souka on 6/21/2007 11:07:28 AM , Rating: 1

I mean if you're going to the effort of buying a more durable drive, wouldn't a SSD be better?

Yeah yeah capacity isn't there yet but still..

Anyhow...how much are these durable drives anyhow?
80GB = $$?

RE: wouldn't SSD be better choice?

By mindless1 on 6/21/2007 12:25:40 PM , Rating: 2

How is capacity not there? Remember that 10 years ago, people did manage to use computers and at that point hard drive capacity was lower than SSD is now. The capacity is FINE already, to claim "oh but I could get more on a hard drive" is irrelevant, as you could similarly claim "oh but if a hard drive were larger than it is I could get more on it too", yet you still manage to use one anyway.

The bottom line is we need to get rid of this MS monopoly, if we had real competition in the market there would be more focus on things like reducing bloat. MS could care less about this toll on a PC, since they are primarily interested in selling windows with a PC, and wearing out that PC until you feel you need another PC just to keep working productively. Sad but true, look at your hard drive light, windows does not need to incessantly write to it to run, and if it were not so bloated it would rarely have to read from it as everything would be cached in main memory with today's 1-2GB typical desktop memory endowments (at least for typical uses, until the less common PC tasks like video or gaming are undertaken which we must concede are, as a percentage of all PC usage, a small minority).

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RE: wouldn't SSD be better choice?

By awer26 on 6/21/2007 3:23:51 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
How is capacity not there? Remember that 10 years ago, people did manage to use computers and at that point hard drive capacity was lower than SSD is now. The capacity is FINE already, to claim "oh but I could get more on a hard drive" is irrelevant, as you could similarly claim "oh but if a hard drive were larger than it is I could get more on it too", yet you still manage to use one anyway.

Your logic is seriously flawed. The HDD/SSD size argument says I can buy either one and the HDD is much larger. Your argument uses examples where there is only one option.

Just because when HDDs were only 32GB people made due doesn't mean now that there are 250GB HDDs we should still use 32GB SSDs b/c it's all they had 10 years ago.

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RE: wouldn't SSD be better choice?

By TomZ on 6/21/2007 5:43:11 PM , Rating: 1

I disagree - complain all you want about "bloat," but I like that software today can do more than it could in the past. And considering the incremental cost for memory, the productivity gains more than cover that delta.

I think the OP is right- 32GB for a laptop drive is too small for a modern OS with modern apps. They'll only find a small market for that size drive. I have 120GB of programs and data on my HDD, which doesn't include any pictures, movies, or audio.

The point of a ruggedized magnetic HDD is that it costs less per GB, offers higher total capacity, and is smaller than the same capacity flash HDD. For many applications, such a HDD will meet the requirements. I could envision many uses for this from ruggedized laptops, car PCs, industrial control, certain military apps.

By the way, as a software developer, I really take issue with people who talk about "bloat." Show me what software developers are writing programs that are larger than they should be. Please explain to me the business or economic reasons why people would write "bloat" software. The notion just doesn't hold any water.

In addition to the above, the net througput of my PC today, i.e., how long it takes to get certain tasks accomplished, is probably 3X what it was 5 years ago. That alone shoots down your "bloat" argument.

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RE: wouldn't SSD be better choice?

By highlandsun on 6/24/2007 12:21:22 AM , Rating: 2

You're either a total moron or just intensely misinformed. An EE25 series drive only has a transfer rate of 20MB/sec. A 40GB drive costs $160.00. In comparison, Samsung and Sandisk both offer 64GB SSDs with around 60MB/sec transfer rate, for around $480, and there are already 256GB 2.5" SSDs on the market. So, higher density, 3x faster, about 3x more expensive - with the improved performance canceling out the price difference, SSDs still have the edge based on density/capacity and access time.

Price quote:
http://shopper.cnet.com/hard-drives/seagate-ee25-h...

Data sheet:
http://www.seagate.com/content/docs/pdf/marketing/...

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Disappointing

By Xpl1c1t on 6/22/2007 4:22:08 AM , Rating: 2

here i was hoping for lava-proof laptops...

DAMN YOU SEAGATE!

Hmmm

By MeTaedet on 6/23/2007 7:16:29 PM , Rating: 2

I wonder what constitutes an extreme environment for Seagate? It would seem that to them even a desktop is an extreme environment, since a huge percentage of their drives fail right there.

"We're releasing a drive that will function under the most severe of operating conditions without failure for the first time. That's right, you'll soon be able to use our HDs in... your own home! Right on your stationary computer table! No more installing our drives in prohibitively expensive, abacterial clean-rooms."