Elitists On The Test Bench: Ultra320 Hard Drives With 15,000 RPM

Seagate ST336753LW A.k.a. Cheetah 15K.3

Firmware: 003

Seagate advertises its 15K model as having the lowest "cost of ownership", i.e. the least overall costs arising from a purchased product, from its selection and purchase, operation, right up to its disposal even, and the lowest costs per I/O.

As it happens, at the time of the test Seagate drives were a shade cheaper than the competition, thus confirming the basis of this claim. At just under 75 MB/s, transfer rates are standard for the category, although Hitachi and Fujitsu are a tad faster. The fast Cheetah is furthest behind in minimum transfer rates with 48.5 MB/s, but is naturally much faster than hard drives with 10,000 rpm.

The Seagate produces excellent results when run with standard applications. It also scores well in both Business and Highend Winbench 99 2.0. At 6 ms, access time is at a satisfyingly low level, just behind Fujitsu.