Seagate Cheetah 15K.6 SAS vs. Seagate ES.2

It may not be fair to do, but I must compare the Seagate Cheetah 15K.6 SAS to Seagate's own 1TB ES.2 enterprise level hard drive with the Serial ATA interface. I have a pair of these 1TB ES.2 hard drives and they have been very good to me. Zero failures and extremely fast transfer rates...that was until you compare them to the Cheetah 15K.6...  Talk about a massacre...

Please keep in mind that although the ES.2 hard drive is an "enterprise level" hard drive, it has a completely different target market than the Cheetah. The ES.2 is designed for mass data storage whereas the Cheetah is designed for enterprise mission critical storage. For the average desktop user this may appear to be the same market, but it's not even close. The ES.2 would be put to used in such areas as web hosting and small to medium business data servers. The Cheetah would be found in areas such as banks, law firms, military servers, hospitals, and so on. Anyway, the point of the following tests are to simply give you an idea of how the Cheetah 15K.6 SAS drives compare to Serial ATA.

Nearly doubling the data read and write benchmarks, the Cheetah 15K.6 outshines the ES.2 in every way. 

If you thought the single drive performance was fast, take a look at the RAID performance compared side by side to the ES.2. When you see a slaughter like this, what is there left to say?

Conclusion

There is no doubt that the Seagate Cheetah 15K.6 hard drive is incredibly fast, but keep in mind that these benchmarks were accomplished on an integrated SAS controller on a newly released motherboard. Over time, new drivers usually mean increased performance. Secondly, a good Adaptec SAS controller card will blow away an integrated controller any day of the week. Regardless, the point I wanted to make in this review is there is a much faster alternative to Serial ATA for mission critical storage and it's called the Cheetah 15K.6 Serial Attached SCSI hard drive. Keep in mind that just because a hard drive has an SAS interface that it will not be as fast as a Cheetah 15K.6. The 15K.6 is fast not just because of SAS, it's because it's a 15,000 rpm hard drive with many years of technology and experience packed into the casing. It's the spare no expense mission critical hard drive for data you NEVER want to loose.

As for SAS technology, there is no doubt in my mind that with the flexibility and speed of SAS, more companies will be adopting it as the standard controller on motherboards, even for mainstream desktop computers. If SAS controllers will soon be driving devices such as printers, cameras and scanners, then SATA's days are truly numbered. Especially when the latest generation of SAS controllers can run all SATA devices. With so many possibilities, it may not be long before we see SAS as the ONLY interface on motherboards. I don't think SATA will go away any time soon, but it is obvious that SAS makes SATA obsolete, especially when SAS is to ramp up to 6GB/s in 2009.

As for the Cheetah 15K.6, it is a very expensive hard drive and it's hard to justify the price unless you're in the business of storing mission critical data that would mean business or financial ruin or risked the lives of soldiers if lost. Simply put the 15K.6 fills a very specialized area of the computer industry. Built to replace enterprise level SCSI hard drives in data critical environments, the 15K.6 hard drives are designed to run all out, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and do so for years and years without failing. Technology like this doesn't come cheap. As the saying goes "you get what you pay for" applies here. The Cheetah 15K.6 SAS hard drive is an incredible piece of technology and it was an honor to have it in our lab. Club Overclocker Recommended! 

Performance:	5 out of 5
Innovation:	5 out of 5
Quality:	5 out of 5
Stability:	5 out of 5
Aesthetics:	4 out of 5
Software/Drivers Pack:	N/A
Overclocking:	N/A
Value:	4 out of 5
Project Skill Level (5 being most difficult)	3 out of 5

Page 1: Intro to SAS Page 2: SAS Details Page 2: 15K.6 Specs Page 3: Single Drive Tests Page 4: 15K.6 in RAID Page 5: ES.2 vs. 15K.6 Page 5: Conclusion