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Seagate 146 GB SAS Hard Drive
Friday, April 14, 2006
We have reviewed SCSI and SATA drives in the past that were
meant for high-end data storage, and promised to do wonders for both online and
near-line storage for mission-critical data. However, we have never
covered an SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) drive so far. This
time we set the records right with this Seagate Cheetah 15K.4 drive that offers
146 GB storage at potentially incredible speeds. We cannot directly compare this
drive either with SCSI or SATA2 drives because SAS is a different technology
branch. The test bed comprised a Dual Xeon IBM eServer using the four-port LSI
logic SAS card that came with the review unit. For the High End Winmark and the
Business Disk Winmark tests we got a data rate of 41 Mbps and 11.6 Mbps
respectively. The disk transfer rate was also an eye–catching 93.3 Mbps in the
beginning and 56.9 Mbps in the end. Readers would note that the comparable top
rate of an SCSI drive (another Seagate
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Price: Rs 44,100 (5 yrs warranty)
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Key Specs: SAS, 146 GB capacity, 8 MB buffer, 15000 rpm
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Contact: eSys Distribution, Delhi. Tel: 51811694. E-mail: naresh@esysmail.com
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RQS# E58 or SMS 130458 to 9811800601
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Cheetah 15K.4 that we reviewed in March 2005) was a mere
37.8 Mbps. The CPU utilization was 68.5 %. Average disk access time stood at
6.32 ms (rated 3.5 ms), which is bit more than the 5.8 ms scored by the SCSI
drive last year.
Bottom Line: While the figures may seem mind-blowing,
it's worth mentioning that SAS promises a 3 Gbps throughput and its nearly 100
Mbps rate is well above the 70 Mbps that SATA2 gives compared to its similar 3
Gbps one, we do not have comparable scores of SAS drives at hand to provide a
fair assessment of this drive. The price of this particular model has dropped by
Rs 30K since January 2006. So expect further price drop in times to come.
Abe Kurian
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