AkG
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- Oct 24, 2007
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With every new generation, hard drive manufactures keep pushing the boundaries of what was once thought impossible and are releasing models with dramatic increases in both performance and capacity. Unfortunately, consumers' demands have increased and an even quicker pace - to the point where what was once considered a 'massive' drive is now no more than adequate. This truth is most painfully self-evident in the Enterprise storage market where cloud storage requirements have literally skyrocketed overnight and there’s absolutely no end in sight the growing need for storage. However, unlike in other segments, Enterprise buyers are looking primarily for durability and reliability alongside sheer performance.
In order to appease these requirements Seagate has thoroughly updated their lineup, though there may be some confusion about their newest naming schemes. These Enterprise Capacity-series drives are meant as nearline solutions for bulk data storage and data analytics whereas the complementing Terrascale series is targeted towards highly scalable, low power applications. There are also Enterprise Performance drives that target high output SAS environments where there 10K RPM speeds can boost output of mission-critical tasks.
In order to keep with this segmented yet holistic approach to their enterprise customers, Seagate did some consolidation. For example, the last generation Constellation ES.3 was rebranded. carried the name “Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD v3” and topped out at 4TB while featuring rotational speeds of 7200RPM. It used four 1TB platters which is a pretty typical layout, even today.
The Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD v4 is something of an encore presentation of its predecessor but there are some unique technological advances which allow for better throughput and a drastically increased capacity range. 1TB platters are still being but back-end architecture has been updated to handle the physical demands of a 6 platter design. There are also baseline firmware and component changes that allow for better overall performance and drastically boosted longevity under the most extreme of environments.
On the performance side of the equation Seagate has some to the table with six platters spinning at 7200RPMs and a dual core controller backstopped by a massive 128MB of onboard cache. This is an obvious recipe for success but the design does post some unique durability concerns since additional platters ups the error potential by a significant amount. To ensure their approach didn’t tarnish Seagate's multi-decade long reputation in the enterprise arena, the engineers did go a touch overboard and created a drive that is - if anything - over engineered to the extreme.
From the outside you would never be able to tell that this new model is rated for a whopping 550TB of writes per year, has a Mean Time Between Failure of 1.4 million hours. Those figures are nothing short of staggering but Seagate went an extra step and included an all-silver chassis to boost component shielding while supporting their design with a highly sophisticated firmware that takes error correction to the next level.
Unlike typical hard drives, which use basic ECC, the new v4 6TB includes Super Parity ECC, adding an additional parity bit on top of the normal ECC parity. The additional 'super' parity allows this drive to boast an uncorrectable error rate of 1 per 10 to the 15th power - or 1 uncorrectable bit per 125TBs of writes. This in combination with the RAID controller's ECC means that with the exception of catastrophic failure, that write errors should be ultra rare.
Increased error correction is all well and fine, but Seagate's engineers were highly aware of the fact that catastrophic failures would be much more common if they simply opted for their previous chassis and stuck two more platters in it. To this end they started by giving the platters more internal room by making the base of the chassis flatter and a touch thinner. This not only helps reduce the weight of the drive down to a 'mere' 780 grams, but allowed the design team room to include an additional inertia actuator, a sealed top plate mounted spindle motor and even a turbulence reducing top disk separator plate -which will keep the heads from 'cow belling' or slamming into the platters. Best of all, by doing all this Seagate did not need to use an exotic gas like helium which can leak out over time.
All these improvements also have an additional benefit which will help push this drive from the ordinary into the extraordinary category for many enterprise consumers. Put simply, this drive may have 50% more platters than its predecessor, but by decreasing turbulence while increasing the overall efficiency of the physical components Seagate was able to keep the average power draw to just 11.27W.
This power envelope may sound high in a world with SSDs, but it is the same read/write power consumption specification that the last generation 4TB v3 / ES.3 SATA drive has. While parity with the last generation may not sound all that impressive, for Enterprise consumers interested in running hundreds or even thousands of these drives a rating of 1.872 watts per Terabyte compared to the last generations 2.807watts represents a massive leap forward. This 33% improvement will help reduce total power draw and cooling requirements, which translates to a lower Total Cost of Operating.
When you mix in SAS and SATA models with optional Self Encrypting Device FIPS 140-2 support, as well as Seagate's Instant Secure Erase, the end result is a new line that may offset a massive amount of refinement over its predecessors. It is this unique combination of performance, reliability, capacity and even efficiency that Seagate are counting to help the v4 6TB justify its rather high asking price of $560.
In order to appease these requirements Seagate has thoroughly updated their lineup, though there may be some confusion about their newest naming schemes. These Enterprise Capacity-series drives are meant as nearline solutions for bulk data storage and data analytics whereas the complementing Terrascale series is targeted towards highly scalable, low power applications. There are also Enterprise Performance drives that target high output SAS environments where there 10K RPM speeds can boost output of mission-critical tasks.
In order to keep with this segmented yet holistic approach to their enterprise customers, Seagate did some consolidation. For example, the last generation Constellation ES.3 was rebranded. carried the name “Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD v3” and topped out at 4TB while featuring rotational speeds of 7200RPM. It used four 1TB platters which is a pretty typical layout, even today.
The Enterprise Capacity 3.5 HDD v4 is something of an encore presentation of its predecessor but there are some unique technological advances which allow for better throughput and a drastically increased capacity range. 1TB platters are still being but back-end architecture has been updated to handle the physical demands of a 6 platter design. There are also baseline firmware and component changes that allow for better overall performance and drastically boosted longevity under the most extreme of environments.
On the performance side of the equation Seagate has some to the table with six platters spinning at 7200RPMs and a dual core controller backstopped by a massive 128MB of onboard cache. This is an obvious recipe for success but the design does post some unique durability concerns since additional platters ups the error potential by a significant amount. To ensure their approach didn’t tarnish Seagate's multi-decade long reputation in the enterprise arena, the engineers did go a touch overboard and created a drive that is - if anything - over engineered to the extreme.
From the outside you would never be able to tell that this new model is rated for a whopping 550TB of writes per year, has a Mean Time Between Failure of 1.4 million hours. Those figures are nothing short of staggering but Seagate went an extra step and included an all-silver chassis to boost component shielding while supporting their design with a highly sophisticated firmware that takes error correction to the next level.
Unlike typical hard drives, which use basic ECC, the new v4 6TB includes Super Parity ECC, adding an additional parity bit on top of the normal ECC parity. The additional 'super' parity allows this drive to boast an uncorrectable error rate of 1 per 10 to the 15th power - or 1 uncorrectable bit per 125TBs of writes. This in combination with the RAID controller's ECC means that with the exception of catastrophic failure, that write errors should be ultra rare.
Increased error correction is all well and fine, but Seagate's engineers were highly aware of the fact that catastrophic failures would be much more common if they simply opted for their previous chassis and stuck two more platters in it. To this end they started by giving the platters more internal room by making the base of the chassis flatter and a touch thinner. This not only helps reduce the weight of the drive down to a 'mere' 780 grams, but allowed the design team room to include an additional inertia actuator, a sealed top plate mounted spindle motor and even a turbulence reducing top disk separator plate -which will keep the heads from 'cow belling' or slamming into the platters. Best of all, by doing all this Seagate did not need to use an exotic gas like helium which can leak out over time.
All these improvements also have an additional benefit which will help push this drive from the ordinary into the extraordinary category for many enterprise consumers. Put simply, this drive may have 50% more platters than its predecessor, but by decreasing turbulence while increasing the overall efficiency of the physical components Seagate was able to keep the average power draw to just 11.27W.
This power envelope may sound high in a world with SSDs, but it is the same read/write power consumption specification that the last generation 4TB v3 / ES.3 SATA drive has. While parity with the last generation may not sound all that impressive, for Enterprise consumers interested in running hundreds or even thousands of these drives a rating of 1.872 watts per Terabyte compared to the last generations 2.807watts represents a massive leap forward. This 33% improvement will help reduce total power draw and cooling requirements, which translates to a lower Total Cost of Operating.
When you mix in SAS and SATA models with optional Self Encrypting Device FIPS 140-2 support, as well as Seagate's Instant Secure Erase, the end result is a new line that may offset a massive amount of refinement over its predecessors. It is this unique combination of performance, reliability, capacity and even efficiency that Seagate are counting to help the v4 6TB justify its rather high asking price of $560.
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