Seagate has revealed that it is planning to have a broad lineup of Solid State Drives (SSD) by 2010. SSDs have been one of the hottest advancement in the field of longterm storage, but the technology has not been able to reach the retail market to any larger extent. Tons of companies have announced products based on SSD technology, basically flash circuit instead of mechanical platters, but so far very few of these can actually be purchased. SSDs are currently only available with selected laptops from the major system builders, or as addons to computers from the same OEM system builders.
Seagate has told IDG that it will have both laptop and desktop SSDs with various capacities available in 2010. Hopefully, the disadvantages of the SD technology, such as the high price, have been remedied by then. Although, Seagate will enter the SSD market next year already according to a statement made by Bill Watkins, Chief Executive, to the Wall Street Journal, where it will launch its first real SSD products.
On the other hand, Seagate also said that it expects a higher demand for the hybrid harddrives by then. Hybrid drives are defined by their use of both mechanical platters for a large storage capacity and a large flash storage buffer to lower access times. Hybrid drives are available from several manufacturers today, including Seagate, and have the advantage of being a lot cheaper than SSDs. The performance gains of the hybrid technology have criticized for being too small, but it has still managed to become fairly popular among system builders.
