Seagate Technology released the first 15,000 RPM enterprise hard drive nearly 15 years ago, the X15. While the name was appropriate at the time, Seagate changed the name of the product line in the second generation to show generational updates; the 15K.2 was born. The second coming of the King of Enterprise Storage caught Seagate’s competitors off guard and for a year Seagate had the only second generation 15,000 RPM product on the market. This went on until the fourth generation, at that point competing products starting to perform and in some benchmarks overtake Seagate’s flagship drive.

The latest entry into the Cheetah family is a seventh generation 15,000 RPM enterprise class hard drive that is considered solely an enterprise product. For years the cost of such drives have kept them well out of reach of the enthusiast market, at least until they could be purchased second hand. The 15K.7 for me will be remembered as the first Cheetah to approach the 1 Dollar per Gigabyte ratio, making the drives on par with Western Digital’s VelociRaptor at the time of launch. While I would love to stay entrenched with the thought of convincing you about the benefits of using the 15K.7 Cheetah as a boot drive for an enthusiast system, this is an enterprise evaluation, or at least as close to one as I can convey while still curbing my enthusiasm.



Link: TweakTown