New Enterprise Hard Drives: 6 Gb/s SAS And 200 MB/s

2.5”: Seagate Savvio 15K.2 (15,000 RPM, 146GB)

The Savvio 15K.2 is similar to the 10K.3, but it runs at an accelerated 15,000 RPM spindle speed. As a result, it has to be compared to Fujitsu’s MBE2147RC (2.5” SAS) and Seagate’s Cheetah 15K.7, which currently holds our throughput record of 203 MB/s. 

The Savvio 15K.2 managed a maximum read performance of 161.3 MB/s on our reference test system—still an outstanding result. Its direct competitors are the Cheetah 15K.6 (in the previous 3.5” generation) and the Ultrastar 15K450 by Hitachi (also previous-generation). The Savvio 15K.2 delivered much better minimum throughput, and it definitely won the access time shootout, requiring only 5.0 ms for average access. The 307 MB/s interface bandwidth showed that the 6 Gb/s SAS-based Savvio 15K.2 can operate off of cache memory faster than it would have if confined to SAS/300.

This drive dominates the I/O benchmarks, winning two out of four and finishing second after Fujitsu’s MBE2147RC in the two other tests. However, it is clearly a server hard drive, as it proved only average or above average in the PCMark Vantage application suite. Victory in our power consumption tests goes to Fujitsu, as its 15,000 RPM 2.5” SAS drives had significantly less power consumption during idle and streaming reads. Then again, Seagate’s Savvio 15K.2 is more efficient at workstation-type I/O and at streaming HD video, which we used to test power consumption at a limited workload. Fujitsu follows close behind, crushing the field on workstation efficiency, while Seagate rules streaming efficiency (performance per watt).

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Throughput Diagram

Impressive results. This 2.5” 15,000 RPM SAS 6 Gb/s drive beats most of the competition, except Fujitsu’s counterpart.