The 50-year history of the disk drive is all about cramming more and more bytes on less and less real estate. The real estate shrinks when drive formats drop a size.
500GB 2.5″ drives mean we’re close to not needing the capacity advantage of 3.5″ drives. It’s the beginning of the end for the 3.5″ form factor. Servers have mostly made the switch with 2.5 SAS drives like Seagate’s Savvio.
500GB 2.5″ 7200 rpm drives mean notebooks can get desktop performance without sacrificing capacity. Expect rapid adoption of 7200 rpm vs. 5400 rpm in notebooks now that there is capacity parity and less of a premium in power consumption.
Cool, but encryption is a kindler and gentler way to retire disk drives
Blocks and Files highlighted this very physical solution to a data management problem: how to be sure sensitive data on retired disk drives never again sees the light of day. It’s a do-it-yourself version of industrial disk crushers.
Verity’s quite excited about the Hard Drive Destroyer, and I know it fills a desperate need. But it’s not very resource-efficient nor environmentally friendly. That’s a perfectly good drive! Can’t someone else use it?
The renewable alternative: self-encrypting hard drives like the Momentus FDE and BlackArmor. When it’s time to retire, throw away the AES-grade encryption key, and Poof! - what was once written will never be seen again. Certifiably so.
Momentus FDE is a notebook drive. The first enterprise FDE drive will be the Seagate Cheetah 15K . Stay tuned.
Who’s destroying drives out there? Anyone willing to admit they’re ignoring this problem and reusing drives?
In the world of press announcements, Seagate can be a tortoise at times. And while flashy “first” press releases can garner attention for other disk drive vendors, it’s when the drives are in the hands of customers that really matters.
According to Engadget, Seagate has crossed the finish line first with 320GB 7200 rpm notebook drives from Dell. The Momentus 7200.3 is a rockin’ drive, too - check it out.
Here’s a slow-motion video of the Momentus 7200 zero-G sensor in action.
Who’s using 7200 rpm in their notebook? Is it worth the extra $46?
Bonus benefit: you can instantly and thoroughly erase a drive for retiring or repurposing by simply deleting the password. One-click instant erase! Nice.
Full Disk Encryption is the elegant solution to elaborately hacked passwords
Engadget has recently raised the alarm over gaps in software-based encryption security. First, they reported that keys can be recovered from DRAM with a complex but possible process. Next, they pointed out that thumb drives could be used in a simpler variation of the technique.
Good news: you can close this gap with a hard drive with Full Disc Encryption (FDE), like the Momentus 5400 FDE.
The cryptographic key never leaves the hard drive
It’s stored on an ASIC in the hard drive with no probe points
Any attempt to remove the ASIC from the drive package locks the drive and cuts power to the chip, erasing its memory
For those serious about security, stop messing with bandaids and lock it down tight. Here’s a more detailed description of this.
Slow-motion video shows a laptop disk drive ”bracing” for a fall
What’s the one irreplaceable piece of a notebook computer? Any data that’s not backed up. The latest in laptop data protection is a zero-G sensor that automatically parks a hard drive head whenever a laptop goes into free fall.
This is an extremely slow-motion video of an actual disk drive head being parked as the drive falls. The drive spins at 7200 rpm, which is seen here as very slow rotation. Note the bounce at the bottom!
More facts about the zero-G sensor and the G-Force Protection feature on Seagate’s Momentus 7200 drive:
It is fast enough to protect in drops as little as 7 inches
It senses in 3 axes, allowing it to “feel” head-over-heels tumbles as well as a simple vertical drop
The drive is plug-compatible with standard laptop drives, and requires no configuration to enable the feature
What’s the right storage for a rugged notebook? It depends.
CRN recently conducted a Toughest Notebook Challenge. The tests were real-world, “I can’t believe I did that” abuses to notebooks from Acer, Panasonic, Toshiba and Dell. Acer and Panasonic came out on top.
These systems all used standard-class notebook disk drives, as best I can tell. Seagate’s entries in this space are the Momentus family of drives. Toughness for storage is either built in to the drive (like our EE25 drive for extreme environments) or built around it with cases, absorbers, etc.
Which method is best for you depends upon what the notebook is meant to do. Using a standard drive frees you to offer value-add features like flash-infused hybrid technology, secure Full Disk Encryption and drop-safe Zero-G Sensor technology. Capacity will always be the highest here as well.
Rugged drives are the right solution when the application is really funky, or when the chassis-related costs of protecting a regular drive exceed the incremental cost of the rugged drive.
And do some real-world testing before you claim you’re tough enough!
