Seagate claims industry first with 2TB SAS drives

The 7,200rpm ES range is designed for high-end cloud storage systems

Seagate has started shipping its new 2TB Constellation ES drive, which it says is the first 3.5in drive to include 6GB SAS.

The 7,200rpm ES range comes in 500GB, 1TB and 2TB sizes, supports 6Gbit/s SAS or SATA 3Gbit/s interfaces, and has transfer rates of up to 150MB/s.

Seagate said that the drives are designed for high-end cloud storage systems, and can provide capacity of 76TB per square foot.

"Our customers face challenges requiring the cost-effective use of space while maintaining performance and reliability," said Howard Shoobe, senior manager of storage product management at Dell.

"This new nearline drive provides twice the capacity of previous drives with the performance and the robust design of SAS while maintaining best value in terms of dollar-per-gigabyte."

The company is also shipping an encrypted version of the drive for use in kiosks, video servers and workstations. The drives have an estimate time to failure of 1.2 million hours and come with a five-year warranty.

"Nearline is the fastest growing segment in enterprise storage and Seagate is committed to meeting the market demands of its OEM and system integrator partners in this space," said Carla Kennedy, vice president of Seagate Enterprise Product Line Management.

"The Constellation ES drive tackles the concerns of shrinking IT budgets, floor space constraints and energy consumption, efficiently and cost-effectively."