- Seagate NVME HDDS can unite storage protocols but don’t expect speed records
- Enterprise Systems may love NVME HDDS, but players and creators don’t come to good soon
- NVME brings storage consistency but SAS still has its grounds in raw performance conditions
Seagate Technology demonstrated a prototype hard drive on Computex 2025 using NVME, a storage protocol typically found in SSDs.
According to PCWatchThe demonstration contained a combination of NVME SSDs and HDDs using NVME-of (NVME over drugs) to communicate over Ethernet.
While the hybrid interface showed the potential of data centers, it is still unclear whether this shift will be possible for personal computers.
NVME -Integration marks a shift in storage interfaces, not performance
Colin Pressley, Seagate’s head of customer success, noticed, “We already have naturally integrated PCIe into our HDD controllers,” signalizes a major architectural shift.
The prototype drive supports both NVME and SAS compounds and offers flexibility under what could be a long transition.
However, Pressley was quick to control expectations: “There are almost no benefits in terms of performance. The latest SAS provides sufficient performance and just because it becomes NVME does not mean there is a great improvement.”
For consumers searching for the best HDD or even the fastest external HDD, NVME support gives a little immediate advantage.
The real promise is not in speed, but in association. With SSDs that are already running on NVME, bringing HDDs under the same protocol simplify driver requirements and software architecture.
It is important that NVME compatible HDD is not based on a proprietary standard. Instead, it follows a formalized version of the NVME specification, which now includes commands tailored to mechanical drives, such as spin-up protocols.
This compliance with open standards increases the likelihood of wider industry adoption, especially in corporate environments where consistency is crucial.
However, NVMe HDDs will probably not become available to the public anytime soon. According to Pressley and Seagate, it may take five to ten years before hard drives are fully transferred from SATA/SAS to NVME.
This timeline reflects earlier transitions, which switched from idea to SATA, where new standards gradually replaced older interfaces.
Although this progression seems inevitable for data centers, consumer’s desktops and laptops are another story.
Most consumer systems today are still dependent on SATA for bulkop storage, often pairing the largest HDD available with a faster SSD for boot and application performance.
Until the motherboard chip set eliminates SATA support completely, a shift that is not expected for at least another decade, NVME HDDs is unlikely to become mainstream in home -PCs.
