April Fools In a final attempt to break out of the I/O density gap crippling hard disk drive I/O, Seagate is introducing drives with three heads per platter that will dramatically cut latency and seek times.

Chairman and CEO Stephen Luczo said: "Latency and seek time delays are the open door through which flash drives are pouring in to decimate our industry. But they can't be made in enough volume to affect hard disk drive sales. This remarkable technological feat will close the door on flash drives for ever and be a true game-changer."

Seagate's Barracuda and Cheetah Triple X models will have three heads per recording surface and new controller firmware to split writes among the heads so as to minimise latency and seek times, and write data sequentially for the optimum read speeds. When reading data the head nearest to the start of the data deals with the whole read, while the other two heads could be simultaneously writing data, increasing I/O rates even further.

"This revolutionary and world-leading technology will ensure Seagate customers have the fastest and most reliable access to data without having to spend tens of thousands of dollars on inordinately expensive solid state drives," Luczo said. "The storage world will never be the same again." ®

Update

April Fools!