LinuxHardware.org: Seagate Cheetah X15 36LP Review

“For those not familiar with the Cheetah family,
Seagate’s premier high-end workstation/server drives have had a
long history of top performance dating back to their release of the
first 10,000 RPM drive on the market. The Cheetah line of drives,
as the name implies, are known for breaking all current speed
barriers in the hard drive industry and the Cheetah X15 36LP is no
exception. This drive at a rotation speed of 15,000 RPM and an
access time of 3.7ms beats the previous Cheetah, the Cheetah X15,
in access time by .2ms. The 2nd generation also features double the
cache going from 4MB to an previously unheard of 8MB. This drive,
like the previous Cheetah, uses the fastest available Ultra160 SCSI
interface but will also be available in an Ultra320 model when the
SCSI controllers supporting that speed begin to ship.

Beyond the specs, Seagate sports several other technologies to
make you a bit more comfortable with your drive purchase. The first
is Seagate’s “3D Defense System,” (the three D’s are Drive Defense,
Data Defense and Diagnostic Defense) and provides a set of in-drive
diagnostics that make sure your drive is functioning properly at
all times. This system does many things including data integrity
checks and routine drive diagnostics. The next technology, dubbed
“SeaShell,” is Seagate’s special packaging which makes the drive
much more durable in both its non-operational and operational
states. This packaging is a big deal to anyone who has ever dropped
a drive one too many times while performing maintenance or
accidentally bumped a system a bit too hard while it was on only to
hear the painful clicks of a dying drive. This additional
protection is particularly important with a drive running at such a
high RPM. The final mention of technology is Seagate’s Sound
Barrier Technology (SBT). This is similar to the SeaShell
technology as it is partially a packaging technique to minimize
drive noise.

There’s no doubt that Seagate puts a lot of work into the
pursuit of bigger, faster hard drives. But with this Seagate also
realizes that speed is not always enough and that reliability is
also a top concern. Technology is what has put them on top in the
past. Where does this place them with this drive?”

Complete
Story