Seagate Makes World's Fastest Hard Drive

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Seagate Makes World's Fastest Hard Drive

( 2/23/00; 12:00 PM EST)
By Joseph F. Kovar, Computer Reseller News

Seagate Technology used the CeBit show to introduce the world's first 15,000-rpm hard drive.

The new Cheetah X15 from Seagate, Scotts Valley, Calif.,also offers 18-Gbyte capacity, 3.9-millisecond average seek time and choice of Ultra160 SCSI or 2 gigabit per second Fibre Channel interface, said Rudy Thibodeau, executive director of high-end product marketing.

Because the X15's power consumption and heat dissipation are similar to Seagate's 10,000-rpm drives, the new drives will integrate into existing systems and arrays without the need to modify them with extra cooling fans, Thibodeau said.

The Ultra160 SCSI version is expected to be available in early July, followed about three weeks later by the Fibre Channel version, he said. Pricing has not yet been set.

Seagate expects the new X15 drives to be targeted at a number of I/O-intensive applications, Thibodeau said.

For instance, the drives' high speed could help in transaction-processing sites where hard drives may be installed with only a portion of their capacity utilized to increase access speed. Customers can cut the number of drives needed and the space to hold them while increasing I/O speed, he said.

"Everybody has been talking about storage as cost per megabyte, or cost per gigabyte," Thibodeau said. "But at the high end, people are actually paying for the time to wait for data."

In related news, Fujitsu Computer Products of America, San Jose, Calif., introduced a new series of drives featuring 7,200-rpm performance, 10.2 Gbytes per platter, and technology aimed at reducing noise to the minimum.

The new Fujitsu desktop drives are available in 10.2-, 15.3-, and 20.4-Gbyte capacities, and offer seek times of less than 8.5 milliseconds.

The drives are available with an optional technology, consisting of the use of oil instead of ball bearings combined with firmware enhancements, which cut noise ratings to as low as 22 decibels.