Toshiba Also at 600GB Into 15,000rpm 2.5-Inch SAS HDD

Toshiba Corporation announced new additions to its lineup of HDDs for enterprise applications.

Sample shipping will start from the middle of March.

The AL13SX series offers capacities up to 600GB, its largest-class storage capacity[ in a 15,000rpm 2.5-inch design, double the maximum capacity of previous generation drives. These comparisons are based comparing the AL13SX series and prior generation MK01GRRR series.

The drives provide lower latency and power savings compared with legacy 3.5-inch 15,000rpm 600GB models.

Customers have the choice of AL13SX drives that support 512n (native), 512e (emulation) or 4Kn storage formats. The long sector models (512e and 4Kn) reach sustained transfer rates up to 243MB/s – an increase of 27% compared to previous generation drives. The 512n models provide an increase of 19%, with sustained transfer rates reaching 228MB/s.

Customers also can select a Sanitize Devise Feature set function (defined by T10(SAS)ÅAT13(SATA) of American National Standards Institute), which makes it possible to quickly invalidate data recorded on the magnetic disks.

The long sector models provide persistent write cache technologies that help protect against data-loss in the event of sudden power loss.

The new products are also halogen- and antimony-free and RoHS compatible.

Specs

Comments

Now the three HDD makers remaining in the industry, Seagate, Toshiba and WD/HGST, are offering 600GB 15,000rpm 2.5-inch SAS HDDs and believe that there is a market for these enterprises rotating devices against SSDs.

Their respective models are exactly the same with identical specs. But here HGST is the only one with 12Gb rather than 6Gb SAS interface, and Toshiba integrates only 64MB cache compared to 128MB for its two rivals. Availability varies by few months.

Wait for an intense competition on price and probably the end of 3.5-inch larger and cheaper HDDs at 15,000rpm from HGST and Seagate.

Seagate leads the growing enterprise HDD market with 47% in units followed by WD/HGST at 45.5%, largely in front of Toshiba (7.5%) in 2013, according to Trendfocus.

Comparison between the three existing 600GB 15,000rpm 2.5-inch HDDs

Manufacturer

HGST

Seagate

Toshiba

Model

Ultrastar C15K600

Enterprise Performance
15K HDD

AL13SX

Disks/heads

3/6

Interface