Seagate Technology has launched its first 2TB enterprise-class disk drive as part of a new family of near-line SAS and SATA drives.
The new Constellation 2.5-in. and Constellation ES 3.5-in. drives come in Serial-Attached SCSI (SAS) 6GBps or Serial ATA (SATA) 3GBps models and include a feature that allows them to shut down when not in use to save power.
Western Digital Corp. was the first to release a 2TB drive, but it was a SATA drive aimed at desktop and external storage applications.
WD’s 2TB drive uses four 500GB platters, each platter with 400Gbit-per-square-inch areal density. It has a transfer rate of 3GBps and a 32MB cache. Its suggested manufacturer’s retail price is US$299.
Seagate’s Constellation and Constellation ES models are also four-platter drives rotating at 7,200-rpm and aimed at data center operations. They come with 32GB cache on the SATA model and 16GB cache on the SAS model and will replace Seagate’s Barracuda ES enterprise drives.
Seagate did not offer retail pricing on the new drives.
The Constellation drives will be available this quarter in 160GB and 500GB capacities. Constellation ES drives will be available in the third quarter of this year and will offer capacities of 500GB, 1TB and 2TB.
Seagate said it is aiming the new Constellation drives at Tier 2 applications, or near-line storage, which is one level below 15,000-rpm Fibre Channel and SAS drives, which are used for primary storage. Seagate’s drives will reside in disk arrays and servers that sit between primary storage and tape archive systems.
