Seagate Delivers First 1TB 2.5-Inch HDD at 7,200rpm

Seagate Technology introduced Constellation.2, the industry’s first 2.5-inch enterprise-class hard drive to reach 1TB capacity.

seagate_constellation_2_enterprise_hdd

The Constellation.2 drive is designed for server storage applications and offers a combination of capacity, 6Gb/s performance, data integrity, and low power consumption.

The Constellation.2 drive is designed for system builders and OEMs who want to offer competitive, feature-rich, bulk storage solutions for a sustainable future. The Constellation.2 drive is fit for use in a range of applications in Directed Attached Storage (DAS), Network Attached Storage (NAS) and Storage Area Network (SAN) environments, from small-to-midsized businesses to the largest enterprise data centers storing and hosting data to the cloud.

"Data center managers continue to seek out more efficient storage technologies without sacrificing performance, while still meeting capacity growth requirements," said John Rydning, research director for IDC. "Reaching the 1TB capacity in a small form factor design gives IT managers more options to meet capacity requirements with efficient storage platforms. IDC expects the use of capacity-optimized drives like Seagate’s 1TB Constellation.2 to increase by more than 50% from 2010 to 2014."

The Constellation.2 drive is offered in capacity choices of 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB, and with 6Gb/s SATA or 6Gb/s SAS interface options. Its advanced second-generation design provides improved data integrity with the new T10 Protection Information standard and an increase in reliability (1.4 million hours MTBF). With a Self Encrypting Drive (SED) option, data security is covered throughout the drive lifecycle.

"The Constellation.2 underscores Seagate’s commitment to its customers to deliver industry-leading solutions that meet the demands of IT professionals today and tomorrow," said Carla Kennedy, vice president of Product Line Management, Seagate. "With its class-leading reliability, record-breaking capacity, and improvements made along its entire range of features, Constellation.2 drive is a perfect solution for dense server and storage systems."

"The enhanced capacity and reliability of the Seagate Constellation.2 drives will help deliver even greater value to Dell’s customers focused on their ever-increasing storage needs," said Lewie Newcomb, executive director, Storage Core Technologies, Dell. "The Dell PowerVault storage enclosures and PowerEdge servers are being enabled for even more powerful storage alternatives using these energy-efficient, capacity-optimized, and performance-enhanced 2.5-inch drives."

Dell expects to ship systems with this drive starting in late December.

Seagate Unified Storage architecture
delivers long-term business sustainability
Constellation.2 family fits within the Seagate Unified Storage architecture, which converges technologies (Serial Attached SCSI, Small Form Factor and Self-Encrypting Drives) into a foundation for flexible, powerful and simple storage that boosts business and operational efficiency while reducing cost and complexity. Historically, the variety of drive interfaces, form factors and now, security solutions, can add complexity and cost for both IT professionals and OEMs – all which the Seagate Unified Storage architecture model resolves.

Constellation.2 drives are currently shipping to OEMs and the worldwide distribution channel.

Comments

This Constellation.2 is neither a true enterprise nor a PC drive. It's between.

Generally, an enterprise unit is supposed to rotate at 10,000rpm or 15,000rpm; here it's 7,200rpm. And is supposed to have FC or SAS interface; here it's SAS and SATA. A notebook HDD always uses SATA, with a z-height of 9.5mm or eventually 12.5mm for external version; here it's 14.8mm (SFF form factor).

Call it hybrid? No, it's for drives mixing flash and magnetic memories. Call it near-line? Maybe as we see this device being used for D2D backup and archiving rather than replacing faster enterprise drives but for relatively cheaper high-end storage solutions capacity rather than speed hungry.

That's the same difficulty of classification we encounter with 3.5-inch HDD based on desktop 7,200rpm mechanism but with SAS interface.

Near-line HDD could be a better name. What's sure is that this Constellation.2 is the first 2.5-inch 1TB unit at 7,200rpm, and also the first one with SAS interface (and no FC) with this capacity .

1TB is not a record into a 2.5-inch form factor as it has been already reached by Samsung, Seagate, Toshiba and WD into notebook units with platters rotating at 5,400rpm, but not 7,200rpm as the Constellation.2. Seagate itself surpasses this limit with 1.5TB into an external unit named Free Agent GoFlex (12.5mm, 4 disks and 8 heads).

Here we compare two HDDs that Seagate called enterprise drives by the company, the Constellation.2, and the more similar one on its catalog, the faster Savvio 10K.4:

Model

Constellation.2

Savvio 10K.4

Max. capacity

1TB

600GB

Form factor

2.5-inch

SFF

Z-height

14.8mm

Rotational speed