Seagate Technology, the number one maker of magnetic hard drives, is going to make hard drives based around flash memory too, says CEO Bill Watkins.
“We are going to have a solid state drive, probably for enterprise first,” he said during an interview on Wednesday. “We think we can make these drives better.”
Seagate’s decision is a significant turning point in the religious war in the storage market. The flash versus magnetic debate has been issue No. 1 in the storage world for the past two years. Magnetic hard drives have been a crucial component for servers, PCs and notebooks for years. Magnetic hard drives cost far less in terms of cost per gigabyte and typically hold more data than flash devices. At CompUSA, a 500GB desktop drive on sale sells for $109, or as much as two 4GB flash drives. The price disparity exists at wholesale too.
