Seagate Q&A

Seagate's design model is based on helping to deliver what our customers need. If Seagate's OEM customers are interested in a 15K Savvio, it will be built. However, we shouldn't discount the benefits and advantages of what today's 10K Savvio has over the current 15K-rpm Cheetah - and that is quite a remarkable figure.

Yeah, it is quite a remarkable figure:

Savvio SAS 10K RPM 73.4 GB (ST973401SS): $640 at CDW
Cheetah 15K.4 SCA80 U320 15K RPM 73.4 GB (ST373454LC): $451 at CDW
Cheetah 10K.7 SCA80 U320 10K RPM 73 GB (ST373207LC): $210 at CDW

When IT gets some budget space to get a server, there's a very good chance that they're not going to get the most expensive components. Why go out on a limb and get that newfangled SAS drive when the good ol' 10K SCA80 73 GB is three times cheaper?

If we think of the value and performance gains of Savvio 10K.1 in relation to today's Cheetah 15K.4, at a system level using a standard 3U-sized rack, the Savvio-equipped system collectively delivers far greater I/O's in the same rack space. More drives in the same space=greater I/O transaction density performance.

Anybody seen these high-density racks? So far, all I've seen are Sun's x4100 (a 1U server with 4 SAS drives, but only available with 4 SAS drives in one specific configuration without the DVD-ROM drive), HP's DL360 G4 SAS (1U server with 4 SAS drives) and HP's DL380 G4 SAS (2U server with 8 SAS drives). IBM's server page is a complete mess and is nearly impossible to navigate or search. No SAS storage shelves that I've seen. No shelves holding 25 SAS drives, left to right (at least, that's what I imagine the density would be with ventilation space, considering that 1-inch high 3.5" drives are usually seen in shelves of 14 in a 19" rack).

The line "More drives in the same space=greater I/O transaction density performance" also gets me chuckling. More drives = lesser collective MTBF. Hard disks fail. It's just a question of when. I pity the fool who sets up a 25-disk RAID5 (if it's even possible!). I'd even be wary of a 25-disk RAID10; IMO that's really rolling the dice.

Savvio also offers an advantage with its small size because it draws less power and offers better cooling/airflow - therefore our OEM customers can build Savvio-equipped systems using the very latest processors that draw more current and require more cooling.

Unfortunately, this is all going to be lost on the 3X price premium over 3.5" 10K SCA drives. Maybe SAS is the future standard for server hard drives, but it's a bit too expensive to be the current standard.

Excellent.. Now I know the exact person to bug about finally sending me my fucking rebate.

As if my first post wasn't enough:

Soul Assassin asks: Does Seagate plan on releasing any 10K/15K RPM enterprise SATA drives to compete with the WD Raptor?

Joni Clark: Seagate always stays aware of the market, and works to release the required products at the right time. Seagate's OEM customers have not shown a large interest in this segment so far. We certainly acknowledge that there is interest in the gaming and high-performance PC segments for a drive of this type in single-user environments. But we've found that in the same single-drive environment, we've had very solid performance with our latest generation Barracuda and NL35 series SATA drives. These drives also require less power and cooling which benefits power users using the latest CPU's. You get more capacity; less power consumption and heat as well as excellent performance for much less money than you can get with a 10K SATA drive.

In other words, "No; go buy our current SATA lineup with NCQ". Sure helps a lot when you can't install the drivers to get NCQ enabled because of suspected data corruption. I'm running the Microsoft ATA drivers on my WD Raptor 74 GB (BIOS is in legacy mode), and it still screams. Admittedly it's only a wait for driver maturity or a choice of someone else's SATA chipset/driver that doesn't have data NVidia's data corruption problems.

She then goes on to point enterprise customers at SAS drives again. GG marketing manager. :-P