Editor Notes : “Computers are getting smaller, but there’s one area where bigger is always better. That area is storage. Businesses are being forced to store huge amounts of data, and manufacturers are ramping up the capacity of their hardware to cope with the load. The latest product of that practice is the 60TB SAS SSD from Seagate, the world’s largest solid state drive.”
By Scott Collie,
Seagate has rolled out the biggest SSD in the world.
Some people might have a big movie collection, but chances are most people have no need for 60 TB of solid-state storage. The SAS SSD is aimed at data centers, with twice the density and four times the storage of its nearest competitor. With this market in mind, the unit slots straight into an existing 3.5-inch HDD housing. All up, there’s room for 400 million photos or 12,000 DVDs on the SSD.
“Given the demands on today’s data centers, optimal technologies are those that can accommodate an immense amount of data as needed—and without taking up too much space. As such, we are constantly seeking new ways to provide the highest density possible in our all-flash data center configurations,” says Mike Vildibill, vice president of Advanced Technologies and Big Data at HP Enterprise.
Seagate says the drive’s flexible architecture means it could easily be upgraded from 60 to 100 TB down the track, too, which would suggest there’s plenty to come in the world of high-end solid-state storage.
Seagate hasn’t released pricing details on the 60TB SAS SSD, but it has said the drive will hit the market at some point in 2017. The product was presented at the 2016 Flash Memory Summit, held in Santa Clara.