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Seagate drops new summer spinners, bares 'quiet', 'fast' models

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Seagate is slinging two new spinners our way just in time for summer: a large one and a small one.

The larger model is another variation on Seagate's 3.5-in 4TB technology: the Terascale. This is a 4-platter drive with 625Gbit/in2 areal density, spinning at 5,900 rpm, a 6Gbit/s SATA interface, 64MB cache, and a 160MB/sec sustained transfer rate.

Seagate claims it is the lowest cost, in $/GB terms, for enterprise scalable multi-drive systems. It has secure instant erase and 300,000 load/unload cycles. It is fairly quiet, at 2.8bels when operating, and the annual failure rate (AFR) is less than 1.1 per cent.

These two characteristics position it neatly against Seagate's 4TB Video 3.5 drive, which also spins at 5,900rpm, operates at a quieter 2.3 bels and has a 0.55 per cent AFR.

Seagate's second new drive is an iteration on its Performance 10K line of 10,000rpm, 2.5-in drives, previously known as Savvio, with the Enterprise Performance 10K.7 following on from the Savvio 10K.6, judging by the naming.

It holds either 900GB or 1.2TB, having three or four 300GB platters, and a 538Gbit/in2 areal density. The Savvio 10K.6 maxed out at 900GB.

The 10K.7 has a 6Gbit/s SAS interface, 64MB cache, and a 204MB/sec sustained data transfer rate. Its AFR is 0.44 per cent; this is an enterprise-class drive and it comes with RAID Rebuild technology which, Seagate says, has a partial-failure copy feature, is faster and less error-prone:

Seagate RAID Rebuild technology extracts as much data as possible from the failed drive and then initiates RAID recovery. …

Although Seagate RAID Rebuild technology cannot extract data from a drive with no functional heads, a successful partial copy lowers recovery time significantly while also reducing the burden on the rest of the system. Because data is better protected and downtime is lessened, the technology reduces overall TCO.

This technology is unique to Seagate.

WD's 10K 2.5-in SASD drive range includes the 900GB WD XE and 900GB S25 gen 3 so Seagate has a capacity edge here.

But HGST has a 10K SAS Ultrastar C10K1200 which looks to compete squarely against Seagate's new small form factor drive, albeit minus the RAID rebuild technology. Toshiba's AL13SE is in the 10K SAS product category but tops out at 900GB. ®

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