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Seagate Cheetahs now run even faster

Company announces new Cheetah enterprise hard drives engineered to provide speed, reliability, and low power consumption.

Dong Ngo SF Labs Manager, Editor / Reviews
CNET editor Dong Ngo has been involved with technology since 2000, starting with testing gadgets and writing code for CNET Labs' benchmarks. He now manages CNET San Francisco Labs, reviews 3D printers, networking/storage devices, and also writes about other topics from online security to new gadgets and how technology impacts the life of people around the world.
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After some time focusing on 2.5-inch hard drives and sort of neglecting the 3.5-inch segment, Seagate announced on Tuesday its new Cheetah 15K.7 and Cheetah NS.2 hard drives.

These high-speed drives are geared toward enterprise storage environments by offering speed, capacity, and reliability, along with low power consumption.

The inside of a Cheetah hard drive from Seagate. The line has just gotten a boost. Seagate

Both drives offer up to 600GB of storage and feature second-generation PowerTrim technology, which dynamically optimizes drive power consumption at all levels of activity. However, the Cheetah 15K.7 is geared toward the highest possible performance, while the Cheetah NS.2 focuses on power savings. Seagate claims the NS.2 uses upward of 20 percent less energy than its predecessor.

Note that these are high-end enterprise-grade hard drives. In this area, capacity is still much lower than in the consumer sector. Seagate released a 1.5TB SATA hard drive for desktop computers a while ago.

The main differences between the two drives are their spindle speeds and seek time. The 15K.7 spins at 15,000 rpm, while the NS.2 spins at 10,000 rpm; their respective seek time specs are 3.4 and 3.8 milliseconds. Other than that, both feature:

  • Capacity : 300GB, 450GB, 600GB
  • Interface: 6Gbps SAS-2.0, 4Gbps FC
  • Reliability: 0.55 percent AFR / 1.6M hours MTBF
  • Cache: 16MB

The Cheetah NS.2 drive is available to customers immediately, while the Cheetah 15K.7 drive is currently available only to OEM vendors and will start shipping in the second quarter of the year. It's unclear how much these drives cost.