In 2005, the market gave witness to various technological upgrades in hard disk drives and data storage systems. This year was also dubbed as \u201ca year of 3Gbit\/s and NCQ\u201d. \u00a0Moreover, the industry experienced a major company merging. [no_toc]<\/p>\n
Before 2004 ended, Seagate and Maxtor have upgraded their 80-gigabyte platter capacities. The following year, other top innovators of 3.5\u201d ATA-drives have launched their 100-gigabyte platter technologies:<\/p>\n
Hitachi Deskstar 7K500 \u2014 the first half terabyte hard drive.<\/em><\/p>\n Except for Western Digital, all manufacturers further upgraded into 125-gigabyte platters:<\/p>\n Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 \u2014 the first hard disk drive with 160\u00a0GB platters.<\/em><\/p>\n Soon after, 133-gigabyte platters were also launched. Western Digital, Seagate and Maxtor featured three-platter and 400 gigabyte models, like:<\/p>\n Hitachi and Samsung also launched their 400 gigabyte models. While Seagate\u2019s Barracuda 7200.9 products have offered 160 gigabyte capacity per platter.<\/p>\n By 2006, Seagate, Hitachi and Maxtor have introduced their 500 gigabyte technologies. Moreover, Maxtor\u2019s 500 gigabyte model featured a four-platter design.<\/p>\n In theory, certain manufacturers could have launched higher capacity technologies:<\/p>\n Lower gigabyte models could have been adopted due to low market demand. The 500-gigabyte models, for example, were only deemed relavant for professional storage systems.<\/p>\n Seagate Savvio 10K.1 \u2014 the first 2.5\u2033 SCSI and SAS hard disk drive.<\/em><\/p>\n As HDD capacities have increased, so did cache sizes.\u00a0 In 2015, manufacturers have followed Maxtor\u2019s technological advancement by launching top producs with 16-megabyte buffers:<\/p>\n Such buffer levels are also found among HDDs of servers and notebooks.<\/p>\n However, the quality of system performance is not necessarily determined through the buffer size. Sytem performance depends on a firmware\u2019s efficiency in handling buffers to cache information for writing and reading.\u00a0 As an example, Maxtor\u2019s above average system performance is mainly attributed to its dual-processor controller.<\/p>\n All HDD companies also continue to incorporate 2 MB buffer into their desktop systems. These products usually cater to the lower market segments. Moreover, these systems perform almost as fast as those with 8 MB buffers.<\/p>\n Furthermore, the past year was characterized by HDD developments in three market areas: operations acoustic noise, power heating or consumption, and shock resistance. However, the technicalities of the upgrades were much different than previous upgrades.<\/p>\n Adaptec products for Serial Attached SCSI.<\/em><\/p>\n Serial HDD systems have developed in 2005. SATA 1.0 was upgraded to SATA 2.0. Some of its features include:<\/p>\n The Native Command Queuing Support was also improved in select Seagate and Maxtor models. Major HDD companies have also upgraded their systems in support of the NCQ and 3 Gbit\/s technologies. \u00a0However, the industry is yet to speak about the functions\u2019 compliance with ATA 2.5\u201d system specifications.<\/p>\n According to various tests, NCQ and 3 Gbit\/s technologies does not always result to a system improvement. As an example, 3 Gbit\/s technologies are deemed irrelevant for desktops. Some manufacturers, like Western Digital, even disable the NCQ of select desktop hard disk drives.<\/p>\n Still, the new technologies were used by host controllers. There were in-store promotions of various PCI add-ons of the ATA II system, particularly on Marvel, Silicon Image and Promise chips. In the spring of 2005, motherboad system chipsets were also integrated to RAID controllers that supports NCQ and and SATA 3 GBit\/s. Its pioneers were Nvidia and Intel.<\/p>\n Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 SATA \u2014 the fastest hard disk drive for notebooks.<\/em><\/p>\n In 2005, professional storage systems sales grew. Hence, the system\u2019s HDD sales also grew, especially the Ultra 320 SCSI product.\u00a0 This occurrence has negated the rumors for the SCSI technology\u2019s downfall, due to the believed impossibility of a speedy interface modification. Despite the absence of upgrades in Ultra320-SCSI products, the market was well-satisfied with the existing 2004 products.<\/p>\n Seagate Momentus 5400.3 based on perpendicular magnetic recording.<\/em><\/p>\n In 2004, Seagate has launched its new 2.5\u201d storage device. This device was incorporated in the Savvio 10K.1 models. In 2005, Seagate launched the Fibre Channel, as well as the modified SAS of its Savvio products. \u00a0Fujitsu has also made SAS modifications to its 2.5\u201d enterprise drive called MAV2073RC.\u00a0 These hard drives were advisable for usage of professional systems. Such systems include 1U storage, 2U storage, blade servers and servers.<\/p>\n Particularly among professional storage systems, the usage of Serial-Attached variant was most recognized in 2005. A number of host controller manufacturers have launched new RAID products for the SAS interface.<\/p>\n In the year 2005, the industry has witnessed a major company merging, that of\u00a0 Seagate and Maxtor. Seagate has bought its huge competitor for about two billion dollars.<\/p>\n The acquisition was made when Maxtor\u2019s capitalization has dropped. The shareholders temporarily follows a shares split of 16% for Maxtor and 84% for Seagate.<\/p>\n This merging resulted to garnering almost half of the global market for HDDs. Moreover, the newly-merged company expects an accumulated savings of 300 million dollars per year.<\/p>\n The company merging is still taking place. The two brands are currently acting as separate entities in the market.<\/p>\n As of today, the HDD industry is on the look out for the next set of company and market shifts. The newly-merged company, for example, is hoped the avoid the company failure experienced by a previous merger, Maxtor and Quantum. The failed merging was attributed to poor management and marketing incompetence, despite Maxtor\u2019s premium technological capacities.<\/p>\n Other manufacturers are yet to take a stand on whether they follow Maxtor\u2019s initiative in launching a dual-processor controller. Hitachi GST is also facing challenges in keeping market stability. While Samsung and Western Digital needs to keep up with the latest HDD technology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 2005, the market gave witness to various technological upgrades in hard disk drives and data storage systems. This year was also dubbed as \u201ca year of 3Gbit\/s and NCQ\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/extensivelyreviewed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/extensivelyreviewed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/extensivelyreviewed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extensivelyreviewed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extensivelyreviewed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/extensivelyreviewed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":546,"href":"https:\/\/extensivelyreviewed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions\/546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/extensivelyreviewed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extensivelyreviewed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/extensivelyreviewed.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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On Cache Sizes<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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On Serial Interface Progress<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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On SCSI Technology and the Launch of SAS<\/strong><\/h2>\n
A Major Company Merging<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Conclusion<\/strong><\/h2>\n