Manual will be shortly updated - We have confirmation from Seagate that these are SMR drives.
To quote directly from Seagate's email:
"Perpendicular Recording Technology" is technically the correct descriptor for the "recording heads/media" in the drive. Shingled Magnetic Recording means overlapping tracks of "perpendicular recording technology". We'll update the manuals to be clearer. The drive has our proprietary "Muti-Tier Caching Technology", MTC Technology (TM) that allows us to manage data flow in various storage devices present on the drives - DRAMs, NAND, legacy perpendicular recording zones, and shingled perpendicular recording zones - and the MTC Technology largely makes the underline technology less of a factor.
Think there has been some miscomunication because they updated the manual for "Mobile HDDs" Rev.E Bullet changed to SMR: http://www.seagate.com/files/www-content/product-c... not the manual for the Barracudas mentioned in this article.
except these will undoubtedly end up as boot drives in some budget plastic laptops from Acer... Then we'll have a fresh round of Acer complaining about how terrible Microsoft is to them.
There's certainly going to be plenty of spinning drives connected to NAS for awhile. Not everybody is willing to access their data only when the cloud is available. Of course, most NAS boxes are built for 3.5", and it depends how things are priced.
I'd be curious to know if the market really prefers 2.5" for cold storage. The fact that you can drive a USB storage system without any additional power (I'm assuming, earlier drives worked) makes for great cold storage. Of course it still requires additional parts and a willingness to pay to backup your data.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if more than a few >2T drives found there way into laptops that can take a standard 2.5" drive plus some other SSD. Then again, I'm guessing most people who think that way tend to prefer desktops.
I quite like the SMR drives Seagate is putting out. I wouldn't want them as a primary system drive, but I have 4x8TB SMR drives in a QNAP NAS in a RAID1 array. It was a cheap way to get 16TB of storage, and I'm using it for Plex where the write speed is basically irrelevant and it can read fast enough to saturate Ethernet already.
Why there isn't a 9mm height drive? It passes 7mm to 15mm after 2TB to 3TB. 3TB drive might surely be 9mm, so it can be fitted on a standart notebook. Still the internally fittable size is 2TB remained! No developmet at capacity....
is there any difference between the ST2000LM015 and the ST2000LM007 ? i just bought the ST2000LM007 because it was $20 cheaper but looking at the specs i see no differences
The current product manual still shown this 2.5 inch 5TB hard drive using 'Perpendicular recording technology', when does the Seagate will update/correct the manual?
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29 Comments
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edzieba - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Are you sure these are SMR drives? Toms (http://www.tomshardware.com/news/seagate-barracuda... is reporting them as PMR.JimmySmits - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
The manual says Perpendicular recording technology. http://www.seagate.com/www-content/product-content...ganeshts - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Manual will be shortly updated - We have confirmation from Seagate that these are SMR drives.To quote directly from Seagate's email:
malhal - Sunday, September 3, 2017 - link
Think there has been some miscomunication because they updated the manual for "Mobile HDDs" Rev.E Bullet changed to SMR: http://www.seagate.com/files/www-content/product-c... not the manual for the Barracudas mentioned in this article.meacupla - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
I think they are SMR, because they (spinpoint 4gb) slow down to a crawl when you have a lot of data on them.syxbit - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
The 7mm versions should fit in the PS4 (anything less than 9mm will fit)Morawka - Sunday, October 23, 2016 - link
there have been 7mm 2TB's for 2 years now thoJimmySmits - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
The manual specifically says this drive uses PMR, not SMR.cygnus1 - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
All SMR are PMR. But not all PMR are SMR.SMR really should be called SPMR. The tracks are still perpendicular, they're just also shingled/layered on top of each other.
cbm80 - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Tech journalists should stop using PMR to mean non-shingled. It never made any sense.mickulty - Sunday, October 23, 2016 - link
See also: IDEShadowmaster625 - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
5.6 mS latency. Welcome to.... 2016?yannigr2 - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Find me an SSD with 5TB capacity and $150 price.cygnus1 - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
yeah, these aren't going to be performance drives. But cramming 5TB onto 2.5" spindles is great for density in backup systems hardware.Gunbuster - Monday, October 24, 2016 - link
except these will undoubtedly end up as boot drives in some budget plastic laptops from Acer... Then we'll have a fresh round of Acer complaining about how terrible Microsoft is to them.yannigr2 - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
2 years of warranty tell me that I do not want to put 5TB of data in there, without having a backup.cygnus1 - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
It doesn't matter what the warranty or the hardware is. If you only have 1 copy of that 5TB worth data, you don't care about that data.bigboxes - Saturday, October 22, 2016 - link
Exactly. Back up your data.MrSpadge - Sunday, October 23, 2016 - link
You don't want to store any valuable data on any single drive, no matter the amount, warrenty or moon phase.CaedenV - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Rebuilding a server at work soon with new drives and ram and thought a few 5TB drives might be good... then saw the warranty. Maybe not.But 5TB 2.5" drives for my home server? Hmmm.... maybe.
MrSpadge - Sunday, October 23, 2016 - link
They're for cold storage only. And the warrenty.. feel free to buy enterprise drives with 5 years instead of 2 years for at least 3x the price.wumpus - Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - link
There's certainly going to be plenty of spinning drives connected to NAS for awhile. Not everybody is willing to access their data only when the cloud is available. Of course, most NAS boxes are built for 3.5", and it depends how things are priced.I'd be curious to know if the market really prefers 2.5" for cold storage. The fact that you can drive a USB storage system without any additional power (I'm assuming, earlier drives worked) makes for great cold storage. Of course it still requires additional parts and a willingness to pay to backup your data.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if more than a few >2T drives found there way into laptops that can take a standard 2.5" drive plus some other SSD. Then again, I'm guessing most people who think that way tend to prefer desktops.
Reflex - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
I quite like the SMR drives Seagate is putting out. I wouldn't want them as a primary system drive, but I have 4x8TB SMR drives in a QNAP NAS in a RAID1 array. It was a cheap way to get 16TB of storage, and I'm using it for Plex where the write speed is basically irrelevant and it can read fast enough to saturate Ethernet already.Wolfpup - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
I wish we'd get rid of both SMR and TLC drives. The last thing we need hard drives to be is even LESS reliable :-/satai - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link
Just buy lower capacity or more expensive drives...iwodo - Saturday, October 22, 2016 - link
$150 for a 2.5" 5TB HDD? That is VERY attractive. I want a small NAS that fits two of these inside with 1 Drive as Failover.karakarga - Monday, October 24, 2016 - link
Why there isn't a 9mm height drive? It passes 7mm to 15mm after 2TB to 3TB. 3TB drive might surely be 9mm, so it can be fitted on a standart notebook. Still the internally fittable size is 2TB remained! No developmet at capacity....anarky321 - Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - link
is there any difference between the ST2000LM015 and the ST2000LM007 ? i just bought the ST2000LM007 because it was $20 cheaper but looking at the specs i see no differencesTedaz - Friday, April 7, 2017 - link
The current product manual still shown this 2.5 inch 5TB hard drive using 'Perpendicular recording technology', when does the Seagate will update/correct the manual?