Seagate unveils low-power enterprise drives

Seagate's new drives feature second-generation PowerTrim technology

Seagate has added two new products to its Cheetah range of enterprise level hard drives, which it claims will help beat the credit crunch by providing improved levels of system performance, capacity, reliability and lower power consumption.

The storage firm said that the new Cheetah 15K.7 drive offers the highest performance of any 3.5in drive, while the Cheetah NS.2 features the lowest power requirement of any 3.5in Tier 1 drive.

Both drives feature the second generation of Seagate's PowerTrim technology, which dynamically optimises drive power consumption at all levels of activity. Using PowerTrim, the Cheetah NS.2 provides power savings of over 20 per cent when compared to its first-generation design.

"Seagate recognises that IT budgets are constrained, and these new 3.5in Cheetah drives are aimed at helping businesses to sensibly grow and scale as their information needs continue, while providing the reliability to avoid costly interruption or downtime," said Sherman Black, senior vice president of core hard disk drive (HDD) marketing and strategy at Seagate.

"While many organisations are making the transition to 2.5in enterprise-class drives, 3.5in Cheetah drives are the leading standard for existing enterprise systems. Seagate remains committed to serving the market with a full line-up of storage solutions for a broad range of needs and budgets."

The 15K.7 drive will be available in capacities of 300GB, 450GB and 600GB and will support data transfer rates of 6Gbit/s on a SAS-2.0 interface and 4Gbit/s on Fibre Channel. They boast a 16MB cache and a seek time of 3.4ms.

The NS.2 drives offer the same interface speeds, cache and capacities, and have a seek time of 3.8ms.

"External storage system OEMs continue to consume the majority of 3.5in performance-optimised HDDs shipped each quarter, whereas server manufacturers consumed nearly all of the 2.5in SFF performance-optimised HDDs that shipped in 2008," said John Rydning, research director for HDDs at analyst firm IDC.

"Seagate's new 3.5in Cheetah drives with up to 600GB of capacity will fill a critical need for its customers and end users looking to extend the life of existing external storage system platforms."

Both sets of drives will be available as self-encrypting drives for designated OEMs, providing government-grade data security and instant secure erase for drives repurposed, reused, recycled or returned for expired lease, repair or warranty.

The Cheetah NS.2 drive is available now and the Cheetah 15K.7 drive is currently undergoing OEM qualifications and will start shipping to channel partners next quarter.