Mr. Thomas Coughlin

GLG News by Mr. Thomas Coughlin, President

Isilon joins ranks of enterprise flash memory users

February 22, 2010

Analysis of:Isilon Turbo-Charges Scale-out NAS With Solid State Drives | www.infostor.com

Isilon is using STEC solid state drives for metadata serving in their next generation of NAS systems. This will speed up metadata-intensive namespace operations and assist server virtualization, electronic design and financial analysis. The actual data is stored on SAS or SATA HDDs but metadata access is through the SSDs. Combining SSDs for metadata with HDDs for the data provides higher performance data operations while maintaining the low costs of HDD storage systems

Consolidation hits the flash memory market

February 22, 2010

Analysis of:SSD Maker Micron to Acquire Numonyx for $1.27B | www.eweek.com

Numonyx is being acquired by Micron for $1.27B. Numonyx was spun off from Intel to pursue phase change memory and make NOR flash memory less than two years ago. Micron will realize about $1.5B of additional revenue from the acquisition. With demand for flash memory high in 2010 this should be a good year for the combined company

Large high performance disk drives beef up enterprise storage

February 19, 2010

Analysis of:Toshiba rolls out 600GB, 6Gbps SAS drives | www.infostor.com

Seagate introduced a 600 GB 10k RPM SAS drive last week and Toshiba introduced one this week. 2.5-inch disk drives with the SAS interface and high performance provide denser enterprise storage than 3.5-inch form factor drives. 6 Gbps SAS offers fast data interfaces. These new hard drive products provide new value to enterprise storage companies

Next generation flash will be less expensive

February 3, 2010

Analysis of:Intel, Micron Introduce 25nm NAND Flash Production | www.pcworld.com

Intel and Micron have a joint venture based in Utah working on NAND flash technology. The companies have revealed a 25 nm flash production process, the smallest production semiconductor features yet. Smaller features allows more flash memory cells on a chip and thus lowers the costs of flash storage starting later this year. In order to stay competitive hard disk drives must continue their technology development or they will lose ground to flash.

SSDs make sense as computer boot drives

January 28, 2010

Analysis of:Kingston Coming With 30 GB ‘Boot’ SSD for $80 | www.tomshardware.com

Kingston announced that it is offering a 30 GB SSD for holding operating system and applications. This drive would be used to let a computer boot more quickly and load and move between applications more quickly. These products can be used with a HDD where user files and content are stored. A hybrid storage approach could make a lot of sense for faster booting computers without giving up the storage capacity of today’s HDDs.

What could help blu-ray discs become widespread in the US?

January 28, 2010

Analysis of:Blu-ray Beginning to Gain on DVD Player Market | mesalliance.org

Blu-ray discs won the HD format war a little more than a year ago, just in time for the economic downturn and reduced consumer spending. Blu-ray discs and players have become popular in Japan but not as popular in the US due to the costs of drives and discs and the success of upconverted DVD players. In the holiday season of 2009 there were reports of less than $100 Blu-ray players and some Blu-ray titles selling for about $10, lower prices should drive additional demand.

Western Digital confirms growth and profitability for HDDs in 2010

January 23, 2010

Analysis of:Western Digital Posts Higher 2Q Profit, Sales | abcnews.go.com

Western Digital announced total drive shipments of 49.5 M, just 400,000 less than Seagate did the day before. Average sales prices (ASP) for WD were up by $3, similar to Seagate results. Strong desktop growth, especially in Asia contributed significantly as well as consumer retail growth, such as external storage products. WD expects component constraints will restrict the supply of HDDs through 2010. Channel inventories are reported less than 2 weeks, extremely low.

2010 could be great year for hard disk drives

January 22, 2010

Analysis of:Seagate Reports Great Q2 | quicktake.morningstar.com

Seagate Technology announced one of its best quarters in years for calendar Q4 2009, this was the first public report by a HDD company for this quarter. The company said that Q4 2009 total available market (TAM) was about 160 M units and projected calendar 2010 TAM is 650-670 M units. Seagate indicated their capital spending to increase from $450 to $750 M to meet expected demand levels. Unit shipments increased for all product types indicated general health in the HDD industry going into 2010. Inventories are reported to be almost non-existent coming into 2010 and the industry looks like it will be capacity constrained in meeting demand for most of 2010

New HDD format improve storage capacity and performance

December 18, 2009

Analysis of:Western Digital’s new advanced formatting gives hard drives up to 11 percent more space | gizmodo.com

Western Digital announced a new formatting scheme for hard disk drives called “advanced format.” The new sector formatting moves from traditional 512 byte sectors to 4,000 byte sectors. Larger sectors means that the overhead due to the sector heads can be reduced leading to higher format efficiency for the drive, e.g. larger storage capacities. Advance format drives work with Mac, Windows 7 and Vista operating systems while a special utility is required to run on Windows XP

Seagate enters enterprise SSD market

December 17, 2009

Analysis of:Seagate enters SSD market with Pulsar | www.pcmag.com

Seagate is the last of the big hard disk drive companies to come out with solid state drive (SSD) products. Seagate delivers over 60% of the enterprise HDDs shipped today. Seagate has introduced an enterprise SSD called Pulsar with storage capacities as high as 200 GB in a 2.5-inch form factor. The Pulsar delivers 250 MB/s sequential read and 200 MB/s sequential write performance.

Significant data flows support significant consumer storage

December 17, 2009

Analysis of:Americans Consumed 3.6ZB of Information in 2008 or 34GB Per Day | www.storagenewsletter.com

University of California San Diego professors James Short and Roger Bohm released a report estimating the flow of information among American consumers. The authors reported that primarily commercial information used by American consumers averaged 34 GB per day. The majority of this information was computer games and TV due to their high video content. These results support digital storage estimates for consumer applications in a 2009 report

HDD supply may be less than demand in 2010, ASPs could increase as a consequence

December 16, 2009

Analysis of:Supply of 3.5-inch HDDs tight until March 2010, say Taiwan PC makers | www.digitimes.com

Taiwan PC makers report that 3.5-inch drives are in short supply and may remain so until March 2010. HDD inventory for almost all products is very low coming out of 2009 supporting smaller than usual supplies in 2010. HDD companies and key component suppliers have held capital spending to a very low level in 2009, this restricts the ability to make components to meet HDD demand in 2010. Tighter supply will lead to higher ASPs leading to higher revenue and profitability in 2010

Google Jumping Gun on SSD Support

November 30, 2009

Analysis of:Google Chrome OS will not support hard-disk drives | www.computerworld.com

Google announced that the upcoming release of the Google Chrome operating system will not support products with hard disk drives. Google believes that solid state drives are the key to a seven-second boot time on a PC. Applications will be run from the web with the Chrome OS and only the OS and user data will be stored locally. Because of the growth in user data on computers, including netbooks, it is unlikely that SSD-only computers will be highly successful anytime soon.

Vast small hard drives fuel new consumer applications and smaller computers

November 8, 2009

Analysis of:Toshiba Introduces Two 1.8-Inch Hard Disk Drive Families for Both High Performance and Long Battery Life in Mobile Computing Applications | www.earthtimes.org

After its merger with Fujitsu, Toshiba is now the largest manufacturer of mobile hard disk drives (HDDs) (2.5 inch and 1.8 inch HDDs). Toshiba is also the largest manufacturer of 1.8-inch HDDs and the company has just introduced a HDD in this form factor with 320 GB storage capacity. This 2-disk 1.8-inch drive offers the highest storage capacity in such a small package and will enable more consumer and mobile computer applications

Optical disc drives being replaced by flash memory in computers?

November 4, 2009

Analysis of:PC makeover: slimmer profile, no DVD drive | www.mercurynews.com

Many PC makers are not including optical drives, especially for laptops and netbooks. Leaving out optical drives is being done not to reduce cost but to allow slimmer laptop and netbook computers. Flash memory with built in programs and entertainment content are now on the market in USB as well as memory card formats. Downloading content and applications has become more common, replacing one of the big uses for optical drives in computers. As flash memory $/GB declines and as write speeds for flash devices improve will these devices replace current optical disk physical distribution formats?

Rare earth metals ban by China could impact hard disk drive production

September 22, 2009

Analysis of:World faces hi-tech crunch as China eyes ban on rare metals exports | www.telegraph.co.uk

China has been the single largest supplier country for rare earth metals such as terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, thulium, lutetium, neodymium, europium, cerium and lanthanum. China is contemplating a ban of some of these metals and restrictions on supply on many others. Many vital technologies are dependent upon rare earth metals such as motors, hard disk drives, electronics and illumination. There are deposits of rare earth ores in the North America, South Africa, and Australia but it may take years to bring these online.

Dual Stage Actuator HDDs appear on SATA disk drives

September 21, 2009

Analysis of:Western Digital debuts 2 TB, 7200 RPM Caviar HDDs | www.techspot.com

Western Digital announced that their new 2 TB 7,200 RPM Caviar HDDs use dual actuators. Dual (actually dual-stage) actuators provide a coarser movement of the recording head to tracks using head arms moved by a conventional voice coil motor while a finer motion is provided using a piezoelectric actuator closer to the head. Dual stage actuators add some cost to the drive and increase servo control complexity but allow higher track density recording. Dual stage actuators had only appeared in some enterprise (high performance) HDDs from Seagate and other companies in that market to this point

High capacity hard disk drive components proliferate

September 21, 2009

Analysis of:SDK Starts Shipments of 2.5-inch 334 GB HDD Media | www.marketwatch.com

Showa Denko, the largest independent magnetic disk manufacturer, has started shipping 2.5-inch hard disks with 334 GB capacity. This disk formats are those used in laptop computers and smaller external hard disk drives (especially where power is off the same USB interface as the data transfer). The storage capacity areal density for these products is greater than 500 Gbpsi, a new record.

Hybrid PCs, will they make a difference?

September 21, 2009

Analysis of:HP equips desktop PCs with SSDs for faster Windows 7 boots | www.thestandard.com

HP has introduced a desktop computer with a combination of an SSD and a HDD. The SSD will store Windows and commonly accessed applications while the HDD stores user data and other content. The SSD provides faster performance than a HDD for sequential data transfer but may be slower than the HDD for random data.

HDD component vendors support increasing storage capacity

August 20, 2009

Analysis of:Head shop rolls out disk size roadmap | www.theregister.co.uk

TDK has shown a roadmap for HDD heads showing development of areal densities with time. Current mass produced products are 250 GB/platter and 500 GB/platter for 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch HDDs respectively. Full production of 320 GB/platter 2.5-inch drives is to start by December (thus close to 1 TB for 3 disks and 620 GB for 2 disks). Full production of 640 GB/platter 3.5-inch drives should begin in January 2010.

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