The Cheetah 15K.4 enterprise disc drive offers an unprecedented blend of high performance and cost effectiveness. Seagate has dramatically improved Cheetah speed by delivering seek... more
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36/150 8MB U320 80P
High-performance disc drives face the ultimate challenge in online, transactional
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applications, where every delay can mean lost revenue. That's why the enterprise depends on the unrivalled speed, reliability and efficiency of the Seagate Cheetah enterp...
cost effectiveness. Seagate has dramatically improved Cheetah speed by delivering fast seek times, low latencies and an increase in data rates of up to 30 percent ...
A review by sbarwell on Seagate Cheetah 15K.4 36.7 GB October 21st, 2006
Author's product rating:
Memory / capacity
Satisfactory
Reliability
Excellent
Ease of Installation
Satisfactory
Speed
Very fast
Value For Money
Excellent
Advantages:
Speed, 5 year warrenty
Disadvantages:
Low capacity considering price
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
This hard disk drive is designed to be used in a high-end server solutions where both speed and reliability are paramount.
The largest bottleneck in any computer system is the hard disk drive. And as solid state technology is out of the price range of most PC enthusiasts, the next best thing (after adding more RAM) is to upgrade the hard disk drive.
The Seagate 15,000 RPM Cheetah is currently the fastest hard disk drive on the market. This drive is seriously fast and very reliable, hence the 5 year warranty from Seagate. I can vouch for this warranty from experience. Unless the drive has been physically abused, Seagate will replace it.
The only downside to purchasing this hard disk drive is that you will need to purchase a SCSI controller card and cable in order for your new drive to get friendly with your current system.
These controller cards typically come in PCI (32 bit) or PCI-X (64 bit) flavours. Some have the ability to be installed in either slots, but this will vary depending on the controller card purchased.
An Adaptec 29160N works well with these drives and can be picked up second hand for around £30. For a good source on information regarding SCSI controller cards, vist Adaptecs website at www.adaptec.com. You may also need to consider a drive cooler as well, as these drives run hot due to their high rotational speeds.
However, in my opinion this additional cost is well worth it. Whatever type of work you currently perform on you PC, it will boot faster, open applications quicker and generally feel more responsive. And if your system is still not fast enough, you can buy 2 or 3 drives, a RAID card and configure them as a stripped set which will give you even more performance.
A couple of years ago these enterprise level drives were seriously expensive, but recently they have fallen in price. The capacity won't match some of the price per GB's of IDE or SATA drives currently out there, but that's missing the point. If you want to go to the next level in PC performance when compared to today's crop of IDE or SATA drives, then the Cheetah is for you.
But first, bear in mind that most inexpensive PC upgrade is installing more memory (or RAM). If, for example, you're running Windows XP with 256MB of memory then the first place to start is to add at least another 256MB of RAM. If you're a gamer, do a lot of image editing or run video editing software, then consider 1GB of RAM as a bare minimum.
If this fails to speed up your system adequately, before considering a new processor (and possibly motherboard) go for a 15k Cheetah - you will not be disappointed.
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Seek Time: 3.5 ms (average) / 7.4 ms (max), 3.5 ms (average)
Track-to-Track Seek Time: 0.27 ms, 0.2 ms
Average Latency: 2 ms
Spindle Speed: 15000 rpm
Reliability
MTBF: 1,400,000 hour(s)
Recoverable Errors: 10 per 10^12, 1 per 10^12
Non-Recoverable Errors: 1 per 10^15
Seek Errors: 10 per 10^8
Expansion / connectivity
Interfaces: 1 x Ultra320 SCSI - 80 pin Centronics (SCA-2), 1 x Ultra320 SCSI - 68 pin HD D-Sub (HD-68), 1 x 2Gb Fibre Channel - 40 pin Centronics (SCA-2), 1 x Serial Attached SCSI, 1 x Fibre Channel - 40 pin Centronics (SCA-2)
Compatible Bays: 1 x hot-swap - 3.5" x 1/3H, 1 x internal - 3.5" x 1/3H
Manufacturer's product description
The Cheetah 15K.4 enterprise disc drive offers an unprecedented blend of high performance and cost effectiveness. Seagate has dramatically improved Cheetah speed by delivering seek times as fast as 3.3 msec, latencies as low as 2 msec and an increase in data rates of up to 30 percent over the previous generation. This enables the Cheetah 15K.4 to meet throughput requirements under highly demanding conditions with fewer drives, significantly lowering TCO. And the Cheetah 15K.4 achieves these performance gains while maintaining the same power, shock and acoustic characteristics of its 15K.3 predecessor.
Environmental parameters
Min Operating Temperature: 5 °C
Max Operating Temperature: 55 °C, 50 °C
Humidity Range Operating: 5 - 95%, 0 - 95%
Shock Tolerance: 50 g @ 2ms (operating) / 250 g @ 2ms (non-operating), 60 g @ 2ms (operating) / 250 g @ 2ms (non-operating), 65 g @ 2ms (operating) / 250 g @ 2ms (non-operating)
Vibration Tolerance: 0.5 g @ 5-500 Hz (operating) / 2 g @ 22-500 Hz (non-operating), 0.5 g @ 5-350 Hz (operating) / 2 g @ 5-350 Hz (non-operating)
