Seagate unveils 10TB hard disk drives for consumer PC users

Release follows on from 10TB enterprise drives released last year

Seagate is fighting back against the rapid encroachment of SSDs by releasing a range of hard-disk drives with a whopping 10TB capacity aimed squarely at home PC users, as well as for network-attached storage (NAS) devices and high-definition video surveillance applications.

This comes as traditional 'spinning rust' hard drives rapidly lose ground to solid-state drives in recent years following a crash in the price of SSDs, making their higher speed more attractive to ordinary PC users.

Traditional hard drives still offer better value in terms of capacity per pound, and Seagate's Guardian Series of 10TB drives is purpose-built to better manage and move huge amounts of digital data, the company claimed.

The range comprises the Barracuda Pro for desktop systems, the IronWolf for NAS appliances, and the SkyHawk for recording video from security surveillance systems.

Seagate launched its first enterprise-grade drives capable of storing 10TB earlier this year.

The company said that the Barracuda Pro and IronWolf drives are now shipping worldwide, while SkyHawk is currently sampling to selected customers with broader availability to be announced shortly.

Innovative capabilities in these new 10TB drives include an intelligent multi-tier caching architecture for higher performance; AgileArray technology designed to optimise drive performance using error recovery control, dual-plane balancing and power management; and ImagePerfect, which provides the ability to support more high resolution cameras for surveillance than other drives, according to Seagate.

On the desktop, the Barracuda Pro offers 10TB capacity at 7200RPM for unprecedented performance, Seagate claimed, and includes power-saving features to help keep drive operating costs low. It also comes with a five-year warranty.

The IronWolf NAS features the AgileArray technology, rotational vibration sensors to combat vibration in multi-drive appliances, and RAID optimisation for best performance with error recovery control, enabling it to deliver a 180TB per year workload rate.

Meanwhile, the SkyHawk also features rotational vibration sensors, and comes with a data recovery option for additional peace of mind.

Vendors are already lining up to use the new drives, including NAS vendors Synology and Qnap.

"IronWolf works seamlessly with our latest technology developments. With the perfect balance of durability and agility, IronWolf meets the requirements to support running multiple enterprise-level applications developed by Synology on NAS," said Jones Tsai, vice president of Synology's hardware division.

However, the move comes as Seagate is preparing to axe up to 1,600 jobs, some three per cent of the firm's workforce, following a reported fall in demand for hard disk-based storage products.