Hard Disk Makers Work on Higher Performance Drives

Implications: * There are rumors that Western Digital is working on a 20,000 RPM Raptor drive  * Other HDD companies such as Seagate, Fujitsu and others are also working on improving rotational as well as track change drive latencies  * SSDs are starting to compete against HDDs for performance oriented applications, one of the more lucrative, higher margin parts of the HDD market  * HDD companies will need to respond to the incursions of SSDs into the enterprise and high performance space by using new technologies

Analysis: Solid State Drives (SSDs) are being incorporated into storage systems to provide faster data in enterprise and performance applications.  EMC and other storage companies have announced storage systems using SSDs for high performance applications.  These flash based SSD products from companies such as STEC are targeted to compete against the much more expensive DRAM based SSDs used for very transaction oriented applications.  By reducing the price of fast transaction products this capability can be used more widely in the market.  

In addition to competing and extending the market previously held by DRAM based SSDs these enterprise flash based SSDs will also compete against hard disk drives used in applications where the storage capacity of the drives is sacrificed in order to achieve high aggregate data throughput in a storage array.  Such systems use many hard disk drives in an array to achieve fast processing speeds.  A single flash based SSD in these applications may be able to replace several HDDs in terms of data throughput and thus provides a lower cost alternative.  If the primary application is read intensive with lesser number of writes such applications will encroach on one of the traditional markets for high performance enterprise hard disk drives.    

It is estimated that this could affect the market demand for as much as 10% of the high performance enterprise hard disk drives (Fibre Channel and SAS interface disk drives) within the next few years.  HDD companies that could be impacted by this shifting demand for some of the highest performing (and highest margin) drives are Seagate, Fujitsu and Hitachi.  

Another application for high performance hard disk drives is gaming applications and higher performance SATA workstations and arrays.  This is an area that Western Digital has developed with its 10,000 Raptor SATA hard disk drives.  Hard disk drives offer less expensive bulk storage than SSD and will for many years to come, but as in the enterprise high performance market there are applications that need faster data transactions.  For these applications, if the storage capacity required is not so great, a SSD may be a good option.  

The disk drive companies, including Western Digital, are looking at ways that they can boost the speed of their highest performing HDDs.  Even for the high speed enterprise HDDs the maximum rotation rate of the disks is limited to 15,000 RPM.  A move to 20,000 RPM would decrease the rotational latency (the speed it takes to access data on a track) by 33% and thus increase the data rate available to write and read information on the disk drive.  Likewise other changes to the disk drive can reduce the track to track latency.  By moving to higher performing technologies HDD companies can combat some of the incursions of SSDs into their markets.  

HDD companies have not done much to improve mechanical drive performance for many years, leaving them vulnerable to competition to solid state storage products that don’t have moving parts.  They now need to make significant investments in higher performing products in order to maintain and expand their penetration in these growing markets.  The world is not getting any slower!