Seagate introduces power-saving Cheetah NS enterprise drives

Scotts Valley (CA) – Seagate has spun down its 15k-RPM Cheetah drives and transformed them into bigger and cooler Cheetah NS hard drives. The NS versions are meant for enterprise customers and spin at 10,000 RPM. While slower, the 3.5-inch form factor drives still have a 3.9 ms seek time and a larger 400 GB capacity.

Seagate has also added PowerTrim technology which makes the drive use 33% less power than comparable 10K drives. Less power translates into less heat, which in server rooms means less air conditioning.

Since the drives have a slower spin rate, they have an increased Mean Time Before Failure Rate (MTBF) of 1.4 million hours. Seagate is also backing the drives with a five-year warranty.

Server rooms are increasingly switching to 2.5-inch drives to pack more storage into crowded racks. A Seagate representative told TG Daily that he expects two more generations of 3.5-inch drives before everything goes 2.5-inch and smaller.

The Cheetah NS drives will be available in the third quarter in SCSI and Fibre Channel interfaces. No pricing has been announced.