Although many people are using cloud-based storage, others still prefer to keep their files within their arm's reach by using high-capacity hard drives.
For people who still like to use big, hard drives, Seagate just announced its plans to come up with a 16 TB hard drive within the next 18 months, and a 20 TB hard drive in three years' time.
16 TB Hard Drive In 2018, 20 TB In 2020
During Seagate's earnings call yesterday, Chairman and CEO Steve Luczo announced the company's plan to come up with larger hard drives over the next couple of years. Right now, the company's most premium drive tops out at 10 TB, but has announced plans to double this number within the next three years, with a 16 TB in the pipeline for release in 2018. Seagate also launched its 60 TB SSD late last year at the Flash Memory Summit in California.
The company is not stopping at 16 TB. Seagate is also planning to have a 20 TB hard drive ready by 2020, and is also pushing for the minimum capacity of hard drives for new PCs to be at 1 TB. Currently, most entry-level PCs have at least 500GB drives.
Although there are bigger SSDs that are out in the market today, the 16 TB hard drive would be the largest magnetic disk drive once it launches into the market. The 16 TB hard drive would still be in a regular 3.5-inch drive, so you can still use it in a regular desktop. Since the 10 TB that was launched last year was priced at $534.99, expect the 16 TB version to cost more than that.
Difference Between HDD And SSD
Drives that have 10 TB or more are generally used by the enterprise sector. In the mainstream market, most computers and notebooks depend on hard disk drives for their storage, but with SSDs becoming more affordable, they are slowly replacing HDDs.
HDDs store data on spinning circular disks coated with a magnetic layer, called platters. On the other hand, SSDs have no moving parts and store data in cells. As such, SSDs perform faster and are more power-efficient because they don't need to wait for any moving parts to read or write data.
Although the prices for SSDs have gone down considerably in last few years, there is still a demand for HDDs due to its cost-effectiveness. There are still plenty of users who prefer HDDs and will be eagerly awaiting the launch of Seagate's newest hard drives.
