Seagate Savvio 15K - Next Gen Enterprise Drive?

[Rob Williams]

Seagate announced a new addition to their Savvio lineup earlier this week, the 15K. These new drives boast impressive specs all around, including the fact that it's contained in a 2.5" frame. Even though these are the fastest drives available on the market, they use far less power than their 3.5" counterparts.

You can read the full article here and discuss it here.

[Rory Buszka]

The Antec P150 and Solo cases will take these superfast 2.5" drives, if you decide you want them in your desktop machine. Both Antec cases (which share the same structure and steel) offer elastic suspension bands for the shock- mounting of hard drives. Giving these bands an extra couple of twists before inserting the drive lets them hold 2.5" drives, though this style of mounting isn't as secure as screwing the drives directly to the bay sleds.

[Jakal]

Technology is just getting better and better, these drives are another testament to that. A 15k RPM drive that has uses less power than a typical notebook drive? Awesome. Maximize performance and reduce power consumption. Nice work Seagate.

[BillyGman]

Ok, I know, old thread alert...but I've been trying to get info about the possible use in a desktop PC with 2 or 3 of these same Seagate 15000 RPM 2.5" hard drives in a RAID 0 array for ultimate speed. Can you guys explain to me how I can do this. I have a SATA type motherboard (an ASUS M3A32-MVP deluxe ) that has SATA connectors.

I'll be running Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit, and I have plenty of power with a 1600 watt power supply. My understanding is that I'll need a RAID controller card to hook the SAS wiring to coming from the Savvio SAS hard drives. Is that correct? And is there any way that I can mount these 2.5" hard drives in my ATX full tower case? (it's a Cooler Master Stacker 830 model). I hope you guys don't laugh at these questions. I'm just an extreme type of guy. Who else would have built an 800 HP pump gas street car? But that's another topic for another board. I hope that you guys can help me with this hard drive idea. Thanks in advance.

[BillyGman]

ok, I've just been able to answer one of my questions. the hard drive mounting problem is solved! here it is below in the link. However, my other question concerning what other hardware I'll need still stands(the use of a RAID controller cards I mean)....

http://sewelldirect.com/Enhance-4x25...-Enclosure.asp

[Merlin]

A 1600 w power supply?
Do your light dim when you turn on the computer?

Merlin

[BillyGman]

Originally Posted by Merlin

A 1600 w power supply?
Do your light dim when you turn on the computer?

Merlin

LOL..yep...in fact, the street lights down the entire road get dim.


..it's actually pretty cool though (the power supply I mean)..it's an "X3" from the "Ultra" company. It's one of those modular designs where you only plug the wired connectors into the power supply box that you're going to use. That way, you don't have a fist full of unnecessary wires in your case that you won't be using. makes things neater and easier to work inside your case too.

[BillyGman]

In case anyone is interested, here's a link to the RAID controller card that i just bought for these hard drives to run in RAID 0.. hopefully I bought the right one. I'm assuming that it doesn't come with the cables or wires that I'll need. I'm not even sure if the hard drives will either. i guess I'll have to figure out what else I'll need once the packages arrive. if anyone has some info for me that I'll need to know regarding hardware, then please don't be shy.



http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/product...try/SAS-48300/

[Greg King]

Surely it will come with at least a few cables. I cant imagine it not. Looks like a good card. Adaptec makes good controllers so you should be happy.

[Rob Williams]

Originally Posted by BillyGman

Who else would have built an 800 HP pump gas street car?

Geez man, you really do live for power, don't you?!

Sadly, having not worked with these drives (Seagate never sent them), I cannot add anything valuable to this thread. I'd love to hear more about this once you get them installed though.

[BillyGman]

Originally Posted by DarkSynergy

Surely it will come with at least a few cables. I cant imagine it not. Looks like a good card. Adaptec makes good controllers so you should be happy.

Thankyou for taking the time to review that. I appreciate your input on this.

Originally Posted by Rob Williams

Geez man, you really do live for power, don't you?! LOL. Yes I do. It's a 632 cubic inch motor I installed in that car. If i was rich, I'd really be trouble.
Sadly, having not worked with these drives (Seagate never sent them), I cannot add anything valuable to this thread. I'd love to hear more about this once you get them installed though.

Okay Rob. When I get it all together and running, I'll let you guys know how it worked out. Ofcourse, I'll also be posting more questions if I do have any trouble along the way. This will be the first PC that I've ever built myself. So I guess I'm really diving into the deep end of the pool. I just purchased three of these hard drives as well as that RAID controller, and they're on their way. Thanks for your quick reply.

[Merlin]

At least it's cooler in the deep end of the pool

Merlin

[BillyGman]

Originally Posted by Merlin

At least it's cooler in the deep end of the pool

Merlin

Yes it's real cool, but if you're just learning how to swim, you can drown if you're not careful (and in this case, your bank account can drown along with you ). But then again, I'm probably just "preachin' to the chior" here.

[Merlin]

Well, I think it's great that they tested it in the real world before put out to be installed.
To Me, That says a lot.
I think most everyone has had to RMA something ( well, almost everyone )
There's nothing like getting something new right out the box and it doesn't work..... all that waiting for shippping and nadda when it gets there

So, for any company that thinks enough to really test their products, I'm willing to use them

And that's the way it was, April 15th, 2008
Good Day

Merlin

[BillyGman]

Originally Posted by BillyGman

ok, I've just been able to answer one of my questions. the hard drive mounting problem is solved! here it is below in the link. However, my other question concerning what other hardware I'll need still stands(the use of a RAID controller cards I mean)....

[url]http://sewelldirect.com/Enhance-4x25-HDD-SAS-Drives-in-35-Enclosure.aspurl]

http://sewelldirect.com/Enhance-4x25-HDD-SAS-Drives-in-35-Enclosure.asp

A little update here for those who might be interested.... the enclosure hard drive part that the link above leads to which I posted earlier in this thread, leaves something to be desired unless there's something I'm missing. I now have one of these which hold four 2.5" hard drives, and mounts them all in one 5.25" bay. I bought this part because it's the only way that I could think of to mount the three 2.5" Seagate Savvio 15K hard drives in my ATX form full tower desktop case w/out having to fabricate homemade brackets to take up the space gaps that would be left if I mounted them in the 3.5" bays.

So this enclosure part allows a 2.5" drive to be mounted in a standard ATX form desktop case, but a 5.25" bay has to be used. The problem is, that even though this part is advertised as being for SAS drives, it's really better suited for SATA drives because of the way that it's wired in the back panel.

The back of each of the four sub-bays in this cage has a male plug connector which the female connector on each hard drive slips right into. But it's part of a miniature circuit board which is mounted onto the back panel of the cage by four or five screws, and coming off of the other side of that circuit board are four 7 pin SATA connectors ( I believe the SATAS are 7 pin, right?) which isn't any good for hooking up SAS drives, since they cannot be connected to a conventional desktop motherboard via the SATA connectors due to them not supporting SAS hard drives (according to what I'm told). Which is where the SAS RAID controller card comes in.

The reason for the SAS RAID controller card which I've also bought, is precisely to enable me to use the three SAS Hard drives with my ATX motherboard, but the RAID controller card, which simply plugs into the PCI slot on the motherboard, comes with a connector that has four plugs on the end which attaches to the hard drives(supporting up to 4 internal SAS hard drives ). And each one of these four plugs which are for plugging into the internal SAS hard drives, has a 20 pin male connector (7 pins on the left, and 13 on the right). Or close to it anyway. Sorry, but I'm not familiar with these SAS connections, and these pins are so small it's tough for me to count them all.

But my point in all of this, is that with the four SATA cables that lead off of the back of this enclosure cage that I bought for the SAS hard drives, there's a 7 pin SATA plug that can only be used for plugging into a motherboard SATA connectors. Which would not allow use of the RAID controller card. Which I'm told would not work because the controller card is needed for use of SAS hard drives. Therefore, the SAS hard drives must be connected to the RAID controller card via cables.

So unless you guys can shed some light on this picture for me, as it stands now, I'm going to have to take a die grinder with a cut-off wheel attached to it, and cut-off the entire back end of this cage enclosure in order to eliminate that small circuit board it has along with the SATA plugs, so that each one of the SAS hard drives will hang out of the back of the cage. That way, I can simply connect each one of the 20 pin SAS connectors which are on the ends of the RAID controller card cable, directly into each of my 3 SAS hard drives as they're intended to be. So instead of this part eliminating the need for fabrications, it just eliminated $184 from my bank account. Live and learn.