Small Form Factor 2.5-inch Enterprise Disc Drive Platform

[Explorer]

...The performance density or IOPS-per-U offered by these new systems will create storage solutions that are 33% to 200% smaller than today's systems. The drive platform will be produced for the current versions of Fibre Channel and Ultra320 SCSI, as well as Serial Attached SCSI...



MORE AT:

http://www.seagate.com/newsinfo/technology/smallformfactor/index.html

 

[Adcadet]

um.....is it not less efficient to use a 2.5" drive over a 3.5" drive, simply due to disk geometry? Bigger disk=more space/inch and a faster spin on the outside. But then again, are Cheetah X15 platters all 2.5" right now?

 

[CougTek]

That's great news Gary. I've been asking for exactly this to happen for the last three years. 2.5" drives are the way to go. I'm tired of the big and clumsy enclosures. Can you imagine how many 2.5" drives would fit into two 5¼" bays if placed vertically like in these modules for 3.5" drives?

 

[Mickey]

um.....is it not less efficient to use a 2.5" drive over a 3.5" drive, simply due to disk geometry? Bigger disk=more space/inch and a faster spin on the outside. But then again, are Cheetah X15 platters all 2.5" right now?

That was the original reason there was a short-lived effort to make 3" laptop drives. The thinking was it made more sense to get a lot more space, even if the drive itself ended up wider, since large LCD screens and CDROM drives already dictated a certain size laptop.

I still wish they'd made it in the marketplace. Removeable and 5400 rpm.

The 15K drives use 2.5" platters, AFAIK.

 

[Corvair]

um.....is it not less efficient to use a 2.5" drive over a 3.5" drive, simply due to disk geometry? Bigger disk=more space/inch and a faster spin on the outside...

If that were the case, we'd still be stuck with 5.25-inch toe crushers and 8-inch foot decapitators.


Ultra-dense server farms have been all the rage for a while now, and 2.5-inch draws less current per GB than larger form factors. So, the total cost of operations using 2.5-inch hard drives will be less once you factor in the electricity usage. If you don't need terabytes of hard disc storage, the 2.5-inch form factor will soon do the job that <100 GB 3.5-inch hard drives do now. The hard drive marketplace in 2005~2007 may very well be such that we have 3.5-inch drives providing the 120 GB - to - 600 GB range, with 2.5-inch providing the 40 GB - to - 120 GB range.


Here and now, though, I'm sure the folks inhabiting the corporate ivory towers of each and every computer manufacturer are salivating over the possibility of truly thin, one-piece, LCD desktop computers. The MAJOR roadblock to making these thin computers is local hard disc storage that is inexpensive, fast, and spacious. These "Enterprise" drives are a step in that direction. At this point, one could easily speculate that if "Enterprise" 2.5-inch hard drives are already being announced that desktop 2.5-inch SATA drives are surely in the planning stages.

 

[Corvair]

...I've been asking for exactly this to happen for the last three years...
...Can you imagine how many 2.5" drives would fit into two 5¼" bays if placed vertically like in these...

I've been waving the "2.5-inch hard drives for desktop systems" flag since, at least, 1998 or 1999 back at Storage Review. I would have thought that Desktops systems -- not Enterprise systems -- would have been the first class of computer addressed for fast, cost-effective, reliable, and not-so-much-concerned-about-mobile-use 2.5-inch hard drive storage.

...Can you imagine how many 2.5" drives would fit into two 5¼" bays if placed vertically like in these...

As far as dense servers go, the orientation of the drive mechanism would have to be vertical (edge up-and-down) for blade servers with integrated CPU and hard drive on one card. With the more common 19-inch-wide 1-U server chassis, either orientation could be used. In fact, you could probably build a 0.5-U server chassis around a 2.5-inch hard drive(s) and a Centrino processor.