Solid state drive capacities no longer lag behind their hard drive counterparts. Samsung revealed it was shipping its enormous 15TB SSD back in March, but Seagate is going one better. The data storage firm has built an incredible 60TB SSD that it aims to ship next year.
Seagate didn't provide technical specifications for the Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) drive, but the company did say it has twice the density and four times the capacity of Samsung's PM1633a.
Those 60TB obviously mean it's aimed at the enterprise market, such as data centers. Seagate said it has the space needed to "accommodate 400 million photos on a typical social media platform, or 12,000 DVD movies."
The drive uses the standard enterprise 3.5-inch storage form factor. It will allow businesses to access vast troves of data quickly and easily, and should help meet the ever increasing demand for more storage space.
Should 60TB not be large enough, Seagate says the flexible architecture the drive is based on could eventually allow it to grow to 100TB or more in the same form factor.
"We are constantly seeking new ways to provide the highest density possible in our all-flash data center configurations," said Mike Vildibill, vice president, Advanced Technologies and Big Data, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. "Seagate's new 60TB SAS SSD offers an exciting possibility for customers to achieve higher server storage performance and capacity configurations never seen before."
Seagate didn't say how much its product will cost, but with Samsung's 15TB SSD coming in at around $10,000, the 60TB drive isn't going to be cheap. Consumers looking for a high-capacity solid state drive have the option of buying Samsung's 4TB 850 Evo SSD, providing they've got a spare $1500.