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Disc drive market leader Seagate today announced its latest Cheetah enterprise-class disc drives, the Cheetah 15K.3 and the Cheetah 10K.6. The new disc drives are designed for all enterprise applications and serve the needs of IT managers focused on lowering the total cost of ownership (TCO) of their storage systems by using drives with the highest reliability, increased capacity and performance. Only Seagate's new Cheetah family of disc drives offer a range of capacities from 18 to 146 gigabytes, spindle speeds of 10K and 15K, and the most advanced interfaces: Ultra320 SCSI and 2 Gb/second Fibre Channel.

As the industry's only third generation 15K-rpm disc drive, Seagate's Cheetah 15K.3 is the enterprise drive of choice when running more I/O intensive applications and delivers the lowest cost per I/O. The low-profile Cheetah 10K.6 drive is ideal for more data-intensive applications and delivers up to 146 gigabytes at the lowest cost per gigabyte.

The new Cheetahs are being unveiled in live demonstrations this week at Networld+Interop in Las Vegas, at CMP's Tech Builder XChange in Coronado, CA and at media and analyst briefings around the globe.

"Although IT users tend to focus on the costs of acquiring storage, Gartner Research reported that storage acquisition costs are only about 20 percent of the total cost of ownership," (1) said Brian Dexheimer, Seagate executive vice president, Worldwide Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service. "Seagate's 10K.6 and 15K.3 Cheetah disc drives are solutions designed to help enable IT departments store their data more efficiently, while using and managing less hardware at the same time. Through Seagate's technology leadership and time-to-market execution demonstrated consistently with the Cheetah family of disc drives, the Cheetah 10K.6 and 15K.3 disc drives are the premier choices to ultimately reduce system TCO."

"Simple, cost-effective manageability of data and storage is the number one requirement for customers purchasing enterprise servers and SAN systems," said Neal Clapper, general manager of network storage array systems at HP's Network Storage Solutions Organization. "Technologies such as Seagate's Cheetah disc drives help HP deliver systems to customers with even more storage capacity and performance in much less space and with fewer infrastructure changes required. Overall, this contributes to a more efficient, streamlined system that requires less support."

Seagate's New Cheetah Disc Drives — The Details

Seagate's latest Cheetah disc drives continue to have the highest reliability rating in the industry and are specifically designed to operate in 24-by-7-by-forever environments. The new drives feature Seagate second-generation Ultra320 SCSI and third-generation 2 Gb/second Fibre Channel interfaces. Both versions are optimized for easy system integration and feature low power consumption and heat, while providing low acoustics.

"Seagate's Cheetah disc drives have consistently been among the fastest and most reliable in the industry, and are a key factor in the installation of high-performance storage systems from LSI Logic in many of the largest data warehouses in the world," said Ron Engelbrecht, vice president and general manager of operations at LSI Logic Storage Systems, Inc. "We consistently select Seagate drives due to the Company's untiring commitment to providing best-in-class disc drives. Seagate's value as a partner and innovator in the disc drive industry is consistent and proven time and time again."

Cheetah 15K.3

Seagate's Cheetah 15K.3 disc drive is the only 15K drive with the field-proven reliability that spans across two previous generations. The Cheetah 15K.3 delivers 35 percent more I/O's per second and a 29 percent faster minimum sustained transfer rate than 10K drives, allowing IT managers to serve more clients with greater performance using fewer drives, thereby effectively lowering TCO. Use of fewer drives results in greater system reliability as well as savings in hardware costs, space, power, cooling, and IT administration costs.

The Cheetah 15K.3 disc drive is available in the most often-required capacities of 18, 36, and 73 gigabytes. Seagate's Sound Barrier technology delivers whisper-quiet acoustics as low as 3.1 bels at idle.

Cheetah 10K.6

The 146-gigabyte Cheetah 10K.6 disc drive combines performance with high capacity and rugged reliability, all in a low-profile design. With up to 146 gigabytes of storage, the Cheetah 10K.6 is ideal for maximizing the amount of capacity using the smallest footprint possible.

With performance firmware leveraged from Seagate's flagship 15K.3 disc drives, Seagate's Cheetah 10K.6 delivers impressive specifications that average 25 percent faster data rates than previous-generation 10K drives. With a range of capacity options from 36 to 146 gigabytes, coupled with the highest 10K reliability rating in the industry, the Cheetah 10K.6 is the ideal choice for a range of enterprise and other data-intensive environments.

Pricing and Availability

Suggested Retail Prices (SRP) for single evaluation-units are as follows:

Cheetah 15K.3
Model ST373453LC/LW/FC (73GB): $939
Model ST336753LC/LW/FC (36GB): $519
Model ST318453LC/LW/FC (18GB): $289

Cheetah 10K.6
Model ST3146807LC/LW/FC (146GB): $1259
ST373307LC/LW/FC (73GB): $699
Model ST336607LC/LW/FC (36GB): $389