Seagate 500 GB Fiber Channel Drive

[StorageJoe]

Seagate new "Nearline Storage" line consisting of both FC and SATA drives in 500 and 400 GB capacities is set to hit the channel in the coming weeks. Designed to be positioned between conventional desktop drives and enterprise drives, they include enterprise features and relatively high reliability (compared to "desktop" SATA drives) with out the cost and higher performance of traditional enterprise drives. They basicly took the opposite approach as WD (Raptor) in attacking this market by choosing high capacity, low cost/GB, and enterprise features (RV tolerance, NCQ, staggered spin, 3.0GBs, 16MB cache) rather than performance (ie spindle speed). All will be 7,200 RPM, 3.0GB/s, and available in 8 or 16 MB cache.

One thing to note. The FC version (code named blizzard) is native fibre all the way through. It is not just fiber attached (ie bridge chip). I should be getting a demo unit early next week and will know more then after getting to play with it a bit.

[DougLite]

Finally. Tell us anything you can about them, they're eagerly anticipated. It will be interesting to see if Seagate has the goods to compete iwth Maxtor's etablished position in this arena. The MaxLine is a pretty mature product.

[the Jones]

I'm very interested in this, considering the fact that I was on the verge of ordering a Maxline III. We know the new Seagate drives will have a higher capacity than the Maxtor drives, but I think the real question will be the performance. I would be really excited to get a >300gb drive that had performance comparable to the DM10 or the Maxline III.

[DougLite]

Maxtor should have a 500GB drive in the channel and on the street at about the same time.

[the Jones]

Anyone know the ETA and/or price on these drives. I need a new HD within the next few weeks, for under $200. I could wait, but I don't want to wait if there are not significant benefits.

[StorageJoe]

Anyone know the ETA and/or price on these drives. I need a new HD within the next few weeks, for under $200. I could wait, but I don't want to wait if there are not significant benefits.

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: ??? The Hitachi 500 GB drives are going for over $300. I can assure you that you won't find one sub $200 for quite some time.

[DougLite]

Even the 7K500s with one year Dell warranties were fetching over $250. 400GB might be under $200 fairly soon.