HGST might have been the first out with a 6TB HDD but Seagate's response has been swift and aggressive.
The company is preparing not one but seven 6TB hard disk drives, all using the same base unit (five year warranty, 128MB cache and 7200RPM spindle speed) but with slightly different feature sets.
The seven SKUs of the Enterprise Capacity 3.5HD all carry the ST6000NM0xxx SKU ID. They are available both in SAS and SATA configuration.
Some of them have self-encrypting capabilities (SED), while others offer 4GB sector with emulation (512e) or 4KB sectors native (4Kn) as well as FIPS 120-2 level 2 encryption capabilities.
Affordable premium storage
Toshiba announced a 5TB enterprise hard disk drive in February while HGST already launched a 6TB helium-filled hard disk drive although availability has been scarce.
None of these drives are currently available in the UK but German online retailers sell it for as little as 473 Euros, around £380, which is only slightly more expensive than the 5TB version of this drive with a similar price per terabyte at £63.
In comparison, HGST's 6TB HDD retails for around £500 with half the onboard buffer and a near-30% premium. Seagate promised to release 5TB and 6TB hard disk drives in 2014, so the company is spot on time.
