SSDs for gamers and data storage of the future: Seagate at CES 2020

CES is always the most anticipated exhibition of the beginning of the year, the largest event in the technological world. It is there that gadgets and concepts first appear, which from the future immediately step into the real world and change it. Exhibitions of this scale have only one drawback: be it CES, IFA or MWC, the information flow during such events is so large that it can cover worse than Aivazovsky’s Ninth Wave. It is very easy to miss an important announcement or presentation, especially since in Russia at that time there was a small post-holiday hangover. Therefore, the results will be summed up more than once. We also did not stand aside from CES and today we will talk about the latest SSD.

Devices that show on CES can be safely divided into two categories:

  • Those that will never see the light or will be of interest to a very limited circle of users – all kinds of “smart” toilets and other wonders.
  • Releases from large companies that are likely to hit the shelves in the foreseeable future.

Dreaming about the incredible gadgets of the future, of course, is nice, but the users are most interested in the second category – smartphones, speakers, and computer components – from motherboards and video cards to solid state drives. We’ll talk about the latter today (and not only about them).

SSD for gamers

Among the new products – external solid state drives FireCuda Gaming SSD and BarraCuda Fast SSDas well as the dock Firecuda gaming dock.FireCuda Gaming SSD, FireCuda Gaming Dock and BarraCuda Fast SSD

At the heart of the FireCuda Gaming SSD is the base from another Seagate premium drive – Seagate FireCuda NVMe 510. The device boasts the presence of SuperSpeed ​​USB technology 20 Gb / s (via USB 3.2 Gen 2 × 2), the maximum supported read speed is 2000 MB / s.

Belonging to the game world emphasizes not only performance, but even such a seemingly trifle as a customizable LED backlight. The backlight is built into the metal case and can be controlled through the application.

The drive will go on sale in March, there will be three versions available – 500 GB ($ 190), 1 TB ($ 260) and 2 TB ($ 500).

Specification for FireCuda Gaming SSD 2 TB (PDF)

FireCuda Gaming SSD was specially created to work with the new docking station Firecuda gaming dock (they even have the backlight synchronized and can be customized by the gamer to create the effect of immersion in game reality).

FireCuda Gaming Dock is a symbiosis of a drive (4 TB) and a hub, to which all peripherals can be connected via one Thunderbolt 3 cable. But besides the ports (1 × Thunderbolt 3, 1 × DisplayPort 1, 4 × USB 3.1 Gen2, 1 × USB 3.1 Gen2 for charging the battery, 1 × RJ-45 and 2 audio connectors), there is an expansion slot for high-speed drives (M.2 NVMe )

More on FireCuda Gaming Dock

Specification (PDF)

The next novelty, BarraCuda Fast SSD – A more portable solution that fits in your pocket without any problems:

The drive is equipped with a USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C connector and supports read / write speeds up to 540 MB / s. Using the exFAT file system enables the drive to work with both Windows and Mac computers (immediately after unpacking). LED backlight makes the drive visually spectacular.

This SSD is created not so much for gamers as for active users who need to always have the necessary files at hand – for example, for designers, game devs, photographers, editors, etc. It is not in vain that when buying, they give as a gift a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud (a plan for photographers). Backups were also taken care of – backups are performed using the utility Seagate toolkit.

BarraCuda Fast SSD has a capacity of 500 GB, 1 or 2 TB, prices – $ 95, $ 170 and $ 300, respectively.

Specification (PDF)

More storage solutions.

But if many companies produce drives and there is much to choose from, there is a bit more difficulty in doing something new for the entire industry. But we tried and presented a whole arsenal of solutions for managing data of enterprises, clouds and peripherals. New items presented as a new modular storage system Lyve Drive Mobile System.

More detailed presentation
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Crib: who is who

Clickable:

According to IDC report, From 2019 to 2025, the volume of data (created, recorded and reproduced) worldwide will increase from 41 zettabytes (ST) to 175 ZB. Such data growth will occur due to the fourth wave of the industrial revolution (IT 4.0) – this will be facilitated by a network of houses and cities, factories and cars with AI, media and all kinds of entertainment.

More details

Among the solutions are Lyve drive, high-speed CFexpress cards (1 TB) and a portable card reader. As well as a standalone storage solution Lyve Drive Shuttle, which allows you to easily and quickly download the necessary files from DAS, NAS and other external storage. Lyve Drive Shuttle is available in two capacities (8 or 16 TB), supports both hard drives and SSD-drives.

The device is equipped with a screen based on electronic ink (E-ink), so you can copy or transfer data without using a computer.

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Learn more about Lyve Drive Shuttle

Specification for Lyve Drive Shuttle

Lyve Drive Mobile Array

Another new product at CES, literally a monster, is a high-performance sealed array Lyve Drive Mobile Array. It consists of 6 drive bays – at the exhibition we showed a solution with six 18-terabyte (108 TB total) Exos hard disks (read the review on Habré) based on the technology of thermomagnetic recording with heating of HAMR media.

Lyve Drive Modular Array

Lyve Drive Modular Array is another high-performance array that offers flexible configuration options. It can be configured for a specific business process, four compartments are provided for drives. The CES version was shown with an enterprise-class hard drive Seagate Exos 2X14 – this is the first of all drives that works with MACH.2 technology.

Lyve Drive Rackmount Receiver

As a cherry on the cake, a high-performance 4U rack-mounted hub for receiving data was presented. It is equipped with two Lyve Drive arrays, with which you can transfer files directly to the data center structure without using cables.

The next step in data evolution

The topic of future data storage was also touched upon. Our company has proposed a transition from isolated disk drives to a digital world – when storages, software and systems not only interact with each other, but also work as a single harmonious organism.

One of the trends now – autonomous vehicles – few people know, but here our company took part: together with Renovo partner we are working on self-driving cars. At CES 2020, a comprehensive solution of data management tools, software and car safety systems was demonstrated, which allows you to create entire car parks from unmanned vehicles.

Working with video is also not possible for a long time without high-quality and capacious drives. At the exhibition, we deployed a model of the film set to clearly demonstrate the improvement in the speed of post-processing of films through the use of modern solutions for data management.

The Monterey Bay Research Institute (MBARI) is engaged in deep-sea research and accordingly accumulates a huge amount of data that must be safely stored and processed. The latest Seagate solutions are designed to solve the problem and provide research teams with fast and efficient data collection, as well as their transfer to computer centers.

Also, Seagate solutions will not do without a new level of production – factories, in which most of the processes are tied to the Internet of things, so the data stream from the sensors is enormous. This is nothing but the fourth wave of the industrial revolution in IT, where everything will be connected: houses, cities, manufacturing enterprises, vehicles, etc. And all this data volume (up to 175 zettabytes by 2025!) Will also need to be organized and stored. We are ready for these challenges!

Well, where now without 5G – not only manufacturers of smartphones and accessories for them work in this direction. At CES 2020, our company introduced the Vapor IO micromodular peripheral data center – it can be used to place data closer to end points, which increases the efficiency of information processing.

Some fun

Much of Seagate’s CES exposure was dedicated to storage and storage solutions. But we decided not to leave a lot of free space on the stand and collected from Lego a model of a connected city – with the work of the police, emergency services and other participants, which were based on artificial intelligence and video surveillance systems.

For some, CES is a haute couture IT fashion show, those devices and gadgets that are good and attractive, but created solely as concepts and are unlikely to live. For us, CES is a real ready-to-wear, all copies can be taken directly from the company’s stands and used in the company, for gaming, in a cool research institute, etc. Because we create the future for real life in the present and are glad to present something revolutionary every year. And, mind you, this is only the beginning of the year.

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