Seagate Releases High-Capacity Drives

February 3, 2009: Hot on the heels of Western Digitals’s latest 2TB drives, Seagate has announced the release of its own high-capacity drives; the enterprise-class Constellation family.

The Constellation drives are aimed Tier 2 nearline storage applications, with both models, the 2.5-inch Constellation and the 3.5-inch Constellation ES, including a combination of features that enable high capacities, increased power efficiency, enterprise-class reliability, and data security according to Seagate.

The Constellation 2.5 inch hard drive is available in capacities of 160GB and 500GB, with both 3 Gbps SATA and new SAS 2.0 interface running at 6Gb/s speeds. As the first SAS 2.0 nearline drive, Seagate claims that the Constellation enables larger external storage topologies, 100 percent faster data throughput and higher signal strength over greater distances.

The 3.5 inch Constellation ES on the other hand will be available in 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities, and will sport an enterprise-class SAS interface as well as a SATA. Seagate says that the ES is the world's only 7200-rpm 3.5-inch hard drive with up to 2TB of storage.

“The need for greater storage capacity will continue to expand in multiple directions and dimensions, but there will be an increasing scrutiny of all storage system purchases, with an eye to decreasing power consumption, footprint, and cost per GB in unprecedented ways,” said John Monroe, a research vice president at Gartner. “Performance will not be ignored, but a flexible balance of capacity, cost per GB, power and speed will become more crucial in fulfilling end-user storage demands at varied price points.”

Both drives include the company’s PowerChoice technology, which decreases power consumption by up to 54 percent in enterprise environments, and will be available in Q3 this year.

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