Three 2.5" SAS Drives: Enterprise Data Giants, Compared

Features
By Manuel Masiero, Achim Roos
published

Currently, 2.5" enterprise drives are leaving their 3.5” competitors behind. They're faster, more flexible, and now they offer comparable capacities (we're up to 1 TB now). In this piece, it's Hitachi versus Seagate battling for high-density supremacy.

Benchmark Results: Access Time And I/O Performance

Due to their higher spindle speeds, the Hitachi C10K600 and Seagate Savvio 10K.5 access data more quickly than the Seagate Constellation.2.

The benchmarks show that Hitachi improved the Ultrastar C10K600's I/O performance. The Ultrastar delivers a performance on par with that of 15 000 RPM drives, making it the fastest 10 000 RPM drive. The two Seagate drives, especially the Constellation.2, are not intended for intensive I/O operations.

Manuel Masiero
2 Comments Comment from the forums
  • compton
    Toms with some more review niceness. Thanks for another interesting article. I don't think mechanical storage is going anywhere soon. For better and worse we'll still have it around for a long, long time to come. Even when SSDs hit that magical speed/capacity/cost point to be ubiquitous for mainstream consumers, enterprises will still need HDDs as part of their storage needs. HDDs are at least a known quantity that are still getting better.
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  • bit_user
    3rd paragraph: "have to be taken into considered". You also didn't mention capacity and cost/GB, where mechanical disks still reign supreme.

    Also, why not benchmark a 3.5" disk, but only use the outer portion. If both that and a 2.5" have the same density and rotational velocity, then the 3.5" should win due to higher I/O speeds resulting from higher linear velocity.
    Reply