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Seagate SCSI Drives Get Roomier and Faster

New versions of Seagate's Cheetah and Barracuda drives provide the ultimate in PC storage speed and capacity.

By Mike Hogan, PCWorld   

Seagate Technology has announced faster and higher-capacity versions of the fastest disk drive on spindles. The company will introduce three new versions of its 10,000-rpm Cheetah drive, currently the storage device of choice for the most disk-intensive, multithreaded PC applications on network servers, Web servers, and graphics and financial workstations.

The 3.5-inch Cheetah is also a favorite among power users who need the 80-MBps bandwidth of the Ultra2 SCSI interface for daisy-chaining drives, scanners, and other high-speed peripherals, as well as for less mission-critical programs like games. The new Cheetahs should ship in 9GB, 18GB, and 36GB capacities around the end of the first quarter.

Seagate also has announced four new versions of its 7200-rpm Barracuda drive, a more affordable SCSI alternative for desktop PC applications. These drives will ship in 9GB, 18GB, and 36GB capacities in November, and a 50GB drive will be available by March 1999.

Although prices may vary between now and the time of shipment and between drives sold retail and those bundled with PCs, the 9GB and 18GB versions of the Cheetah 18LP are expected to cost $695 and $1240, respectively, while the 36GB Cheetah 36 will be $2100. That works out to 6 to 8 cents per megabyte, which is still higher than--though approaching-the nickel-per-megabyte cost typical of IDE drives shipped with desktop PCs, says Bob Katzive, vice president of storage-research company Disk/Trend.

Prices for the 9GB Barracuda 18LP, 18GB Barracuda 18LP, and the Barracuda 36, are $595, $1070, and $1815, respectively--about 5 to 7 cents per megabyte. The 50GB Barracuda 50 will sell for $2275--less than 5 cents per megabyte. Users new to SCSI will probably also need to spend $100 to $200 for an Ultra2 SCSI adapter for these drives.

Seagate Manager for Marketing Programs Shawn Hook anticipates that, over time, the new Cheetahs and Barracudas will see the same steep price decline that other storage solutions have seen.

"Historically, prices have consistently fallen 3 to 7 percent per quarter, and I anticipate the same rate going forward," he said.

Disk/Trend's Katzive sees unit volumes of both IDE and SCSI drives continuing to grow with no significant change in the 10-to-12-percent share of the drive market that SCSI drives maintain.

The new Cheetah drives access data in as little as half the time as most IDE drives and transfer it to the PC peripheral bus twice as quickly as well. In addition, the Ultra2 SCSI bus can accommodate higher transfer rates than the PCI bus common in desktops--even managing multithreaded calls from multiple processors or peripherals.

Both the new Cheetah and Barracuda drives gain higher speeds and capacities primarily because Seagate has managed to roughly double the amount of data that can be packed onto a square inch of disk surface. Seagate also has made adjustments that reduce power consumption, heat, and noise in the drives.

Seagate Cheetah and Barracuda drives are currently available as options from many major PC manufacturers. The location of retail stores carrying these models can be found on the Seagate Web site (see link at right).