Seagate to Release First 15k RPM 2.5-inch HDDs

By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published January 16, 2007, 4:58 PM

This afternoon, Seagate Technology made an unexpected announcement coming so soon after the Storage Visions conference in Las Vegas – a tag-along with CES. The company’s second wave of Savvio hard drives in the 2.5" form factor will be revved up from 10,000 to 15,000 revolutions per minute.

But as an indication that such revolutionary speed, literally speaking, may not yet be cool enough for notebooks where the company’s Momentus product line revs up to 7200 rpm, the 15K series is being billed for use in RAID storage batteries for the enterprise. There, Seagate says the new Savvios will run cooler than a typical datacenter installation, drawing 40% less power per drive while consuming about a third of the rack space.

Seagate’s value proposition for the enterprise works like this: If a smaller drive could perform better while consuming power, you could actually use fewer drives within the RAID array to achieve the same or better performance than with a lower-cost, 3.5" form factor option. Seagate is systematically phasing in higher-performance 2.5" small form factor (SFF) drives into its product line, while it phases out its corresponding 3.5" Cheetahs.

The company is already calling the 15K editions “the world’s fastest hard drive” at 36 GB and 73 GB capacities; the existing 10K.2 editions support 146 GB capacity. It’s citing HP as having independently proven that claim, though just yet, we’re not being given raw numbers.

But here’s an idea of the proportions Seagate is shooting for: Today’s 500 GB Barracuda SATA drives in the conventional 3.5" form factor have sustained transfer rates of about 49 MB/sec, and maximum rates of nearly 62 MB/sec. Seagate has already tested its Savvio 10K.2s at transfer rates as high as 89 MB/sec, which brings the expected mean sustained rate closer to about 70 MB/sec.

Now, multiply the rotation rate by 1.5, and you have reason to expect the sustained rate for the 10K.2s to break the 90 MB/sec. mark, and perhaps eclipse the 100 MB/sec. mark for brief intervals. This is at a time while Maxtor FireWire external drives perform at about 38 MB/sec.

But it remains to be seen whether enterprises buy into the argument that the more reliable each drive unit is, the fewer you need in each RAID array. Conceivably, all that recouped storage bay space could be quickly consumed with more Savvios.

Seagate has recently been retooling its marketing plan, by moving the Maxtor brand it acquired – which the company had been planning to simply scuttle – into the high-capacity mainstream, while gearing the classic Seagate brand for high-performance applications and the enterprise.

Comments

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It would work perfect for my seedBox :D

http://arstechnica.com/n...post/20070115-8622.html

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I was hoping that this was for the SATA interface, like those you see on notebook computers. Imagine how gamers would drool over this. :)

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Also, imagine how much faster your huge porn AVI files will load now!

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The article contains an error, the Seagate 7200.10 16MB SATA has a 78MB/s sustained transfer rate and not 49-62MB/s .. :

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http://www.seagate.com/w...aRCRD&reqPage=Model
Barracuda 7200.10 SATA 3.0Gb/s 500-GB Hard Drive

Key Features and Benefits

* SATA 3Gb/s interface
* Perpendicular recording technology for maximum drive capacity and reliability
* 16-MB cache buffer
* Ultra-fast performance
* Superb reliability
* Whisper-quiet operation
* Enhanced G-Force Protection against handling damage
* 78 MB/s maximum sustained data transfer rate
* Clean Sweep calibration and Directed Offline scan diagnostics
* RoHS (restriction of hazardous substances) compliant
* 5-year warranty

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Aredo, your source for the 78 number is apparently from Seagate's literature, which you cite here. It's a maximum number, not a mean.

-SF3

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So sustained means maximum, eh?

Always thought they used "peak" or "burst" for that number.

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Never ever believe numbers you see in the marketing literature!

Easy enough to visit http://www.storagereview.com/ and see what really happens. Plus, raw numbers like transfer rate rarely matter in terms of real world performance.

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Nope, read the data again guys:

"* 78 MB/s maximum sustained data transfer rate"

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Not bad... but I wish they'd put out a solid state drive. The technology just took a huge leap forward, and the more companies that release those drives, the sooner their prices will go down and their capacity will go up.

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Maybe you didn't notice this recent news regarding the upcoming future of hard disk technology :

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http://uk.theinquirer.net/?article=36675

300TB hard drive to arrive by 2010

Seagate stakes claim

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Flash memories won't be able to match speed nor cost per GigaByte of Hard Disks for the next 8-10 years at least.

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I bet we see a 1 Petabyte (1000TB) in the next 5 years..

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Except... we're talking about laptops here.

For purposes of power consumption, speed, and heat generation, it's preferable to have a solid state hard drive than it is a platter-based hard drive.

One technology does not fit all.

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ExaByte :D

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servers also suffer from heat, speed, and power consumption costs.

a solid state raid array would be a godsend for database clusters if it were reliable enough. most dbs wont get over 20gigs of data. they dont need massive drives, they need fast drives. solid state raids with two quad-core chips and 16-32gigs of ram... i could replace half my servers with specs like that!

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You are wrong. The first 15,000 RPM HDU was produced by Seagate in year 2000 :

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http://www.pcworld.com/p...d,127105/printable.html

2000: Seagate produces the first 15,000-rpm hard drive, the Cheetah X15.

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Okay, I couldn't remember, but I knew 15,000 RPM hard drives had been out for a long time (why did I think it was Hitachi? *shrugs*)

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I wondered why you thought that 15,000RPM units were released just in 2004.. that's not a long time, it's just 3 years ago. Year 2000 is 7 full years ago, that's a long time in the IT industry.

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Betanews, you need to change the title. Why? 15,000 RPM hard drives were made in 2000 (by Hitachi I think...? EDIT Verified it was Seagate in 2000), that's old news. The news is that they have 15,000 RPM 2.5" form factor hard drives ("slim-line" hard drives such as those found in laptops).

Just a heads up, Scott :) Remember we're talking SCSI hard drives here, not IDE or SATA!

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Yes, bourgeoisdude that's an important little factor, and I'm not sure how that got left out of the headline. But thanks for noticing; I've made amendments.

-SF3

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