Seagate unveils "world's fastest" 2.5-inch 15k RPM hard drive

Ah, companies and their bragging rights. Looks like today's self-proclaimed champion is none other than Seagate, as the firm has claimed that its newly-unveiled 2.5-inch Savvio hard drive spins quicker than any other drive on the block. The Savvio 15K expands upon the existing 2.5-inch "SAS enterprise hard drive series" with a pair of new 15,000 RPM models that could theoretically fit inside a laptop, but are clearly designed for blade servers and enterprise applications. As expected, these drives are built on perpendicular magnetic recording technology (PMR), and are only available in sizes of 36GB and 73GB, which is (understandably) smaller than the 146GB option in the 10K Savvio. Seagate claims that these diminutive speed demons consume 25-percent less power than the company's 3.5-inch Cheetah 15K.4 drives, offer 10-percent faster seek time, and provide 40-percent faster sustained data transfer rates. Seagate declined to mention hard details in regard to pricing, but did state that customers would face "a premium" for the newfangled speed, but hey, you gotta pay to play.

[Phil @ Jan 16th 2007 12:47PM]

I'd love to slap that in a Mac mini

[Alex @ Jan 16th 2007 12:51PM]

"World's fastest" porn storage!

[Chris @ Jan 16th 2007 1:31PM]

A big shrug! Why would I want a spinning ANYTHING, when I can get a Solid State (SSD), 33GB drive from Sandisk???? Spinning drives = dead technology.

achive of dead computer technology:
real floppy disk
not so floppy floppy disks
Spinning hard drives
I-Phone (-;

[Chris @ Jan 16th 2007 4:19PM]

Spinning drive = cheap
Solid state = expensive!

[markie @ Jan 16th 2007 2:08PM]

Ah, I'm using two 15K 3.5" U320-drives in stripe for over a year now in my workstation and compared to the 'regular' disk I had in there before, drive I/O really is the holdup, I went from 50-60Mbytes/sec to 150Mbytes/sec, the gap becomes enormous when you compare it to laptops. My powerbook gives me 20-30Mbytes/sec, that's a 1:5 ratio! So yes, even though these drive are meant for server usage, I would be keen to put them inside my powerbook :-) The drives I have in my workstation were also meant for server usage I guess, but they're hardly any louder, I even like the grunt they make :-)

[jessew @ Jan 16th 2007 2:17PM]

I agree with chris...
Although if you look at the data rate of the mentioned cheetach 3.5" drive it says 73-125 MB/s. The best flash disk I could find (with a 5 min search) was this http://www.memorydepot.com/details.asp?id=FD32GIDE2544TURBO
which only has a data rate of 12-15MB/s and is a wopping $2,275.00 for 32GB...that's pretty steep if you ask me. But the data rate is better than a normal IDE drive...and the power ussage is way way down. 185 mWatts is damn low.

[Chris @ Jan 16th 2007 3:22PM]

jessew, you didn't look hard enough.

Please note the Sandisk SSD has a Burst, Read & Write time of 100MB/sec, 62MB/sec and 35MB/sec respectively.

http://www.sandisk.com/Assets/File/pdf/oem/SanDisk%20SSD%20UATA%205000%201.8.pdf

Double shrug for the fact that it won't work on a lap top as well.... Hey, anyone know where I can get a carbon fiber buggy whip?

[jessew @ Jan 16th 2007 3:39PM]

thanks for the tip. I'm working on mobile robotics and havn't had alot of time to shop around but this looks like a winner interms of power vs speed.

[Joshua Ochs @ Jan 16th 2007 2:24PM]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't these SAS drives (serially attached SCSI), whereas laptops are generally using SATA (Serial ATA)? Wouldn't that be incompatible, even though the 2.5" form factor is the same?

[hmurchison @ Jan 16th 2007 3:30PM]

Joshua you are correct. These drives won't work in any computer that doesn't have a SAS controller. Rules out Macbooks.

This drive would be perfect for a Boot Drive in OS X. It would be small an sturdy and fast for your OS partition where it counts. Then you could use standard SATA drives for your main storage. I'd like to setup a system like this. I wish Apple could devise a system where you could use like 6 2.5" drives or the 4 SATA drives they have now. Make the controller SAS so that you have SAS and SATA support with the ability to mix and match and you have the perfect tiered storage workstation.

[Zeke @ Jan 16th 2007 2:33PM]

waitwaitwait...

"We turn on ideas?"

...wow. I guess we know what their CEO is up to every day.

[cmonkey @ Jan 16th 2007 2:54PM]

A decent SAS card alone costs at least $150. I'm guessing the drive will be over $300.

You can forget about laptops or Mac Minis, they're never getting SAS.

[Rudy @ Jan 17th 2007 2:47AM]

Finally! The last big holdup in data processing speeds is seriously recognized. I hope others follow for even faster drives.