Anyone know when and where the SATA version of the new Barracuda ES
750GB drive will be available?

Thanks,

Steve

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Steve Cousins wrote:

> Anyone know when and where the SATA version of the new Barracuda ES
> 750GB drive will be available?

To answer my own question, I heard back from someone at Seagate who says
the ES drives will be available in 2 to 3 months.  Interestingly he said
that more than likely they would not be any use to me since they are
designed to be used only in tier-2 storage devices.  He mentioned that
the firmware won't allow you to boot an OS from the drives for
instance.  This seems very odd to me but he said that they are mainly
going after the "Big 6" as he called them, and not people like me who
want to put them in RAID systems of our own making.  The firmware is
supposedly designed to work with specific controllers that allow the
drives to talk to each other and such.  Not knowing much about tier-2
devices I had to take his word for it.  I don't need to boot from the
drives anyway, but it is an indication of how different the firmware is
from that of "normal" drives.

He said the best drive for me to use (for our current purpose) would be
the regular 750GB Barracuda AS 7200.10 drives.  He said that the drives
themselves are the same.  It is just the firmware that is different, so
if the drives are adequately cooled (they will be) they should work very
well in RAID applications.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

In article <e6s31b$t46$1@tturner.unet.maine.edu>, steve.cousins@maine.edu
says...
>
>Anyone know when and where the SATA version of the new Barracuda ES
>750GB drive will be available?
>
we have them in stock so my guess is that they're readily available

--
_____                         .     .
'    \\                  .                .                       |>>
O//             .                        .                    |
\_\          .                              .                  |
| |      .                                    .      .         |
/  |  .          www.EvenEnterprises.com        .   .    .      |
/  .|            info@EvenEnterprises.com         . .      .     |
/ .  |         310-544-9439 / 310-544-9309 fax      .        .  . o
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Authorized - DIRECT VAR/VAD/Distributor for new mid-high end storage
iSCSI/NAS/SAN/RAID from EMC, HP, Equallogic, Quantum, ADIC, Exabyte

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

In article <9kBlg.14389$Jk2.7486@fed1read03>, info@evenenterprises.com says...
>
>In article <e6s31b$t46$1@tturner.unet.maine.edu>, steve.cousins@maine.edu
>says... 
>we have them in stock so my guess is that they're readily available
>
my mistake / somebody emailed me that i was wrong so i called my
seagate salesperson and here's what he said:

a. the ES drives, currently called the "nearline family",
will be available next quarter
b. they will lose the "nearline" tag and become the 750ES family
c. they are better drives because they have some higher end features
like 1.2million vs 750k MTBF, 24x7 rated status and various "RAID
ready" features
d. they can be used as boot drives just like an "AS" drive could

>  _____                         .     .
> '    \\                  .                .                       |>>
>     O//             .                        .                    |
>    \_\          .                              .                  |
>    | |      .                                    .      .         |
>   /  |  .          www.EvenEnterprises.com        .   .    .      |
>  /  .|            info@EvenEnterprises.com         . .      .     |
> / .  |         310-544-9439 / 310-544-9309 fax      .        .  . o
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>Authorized - DIRECT VAR/VAD/Distributor for new mid-high end storage
>iSCSI/NAS/SAN/RAID from EMC, HP, Equallogic, Quantum, ADIC, Exabyte

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Andy wrote:
> In article <e6s31b$t46$1@tturner.unet.maine.edu>, steve.cousins@maine.edu
> says...
> 
>
> we have them in stock so my guess is that they're readily available

The Barracuda ES?  These aren't the 750GB Barracuda's that were
announced in April.  They were announced just two weeks ago.

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Andy wrote:
> my mistake / somebody emailed me that i was wrong so i called my
> seagate salesperson and here's what he said:
>
> a. the ES drives, currently called the "nearline family",
>    will be available next quarter
> b. they will lose the "nearline" tag and become the 750ES family
> c. they are better drives because they have some higher end features
>    like 1.2million vs 750k MTBF, 24x7 rated status and various "RAID
>    ready" features
> d. they can be used as boot drives just like an "AS" drive could


My rep (Disc Presales) concurs with all of this except for d.  He says
that a vendor who buys 10,000 units can get the boot feature added in
but the standard distribution drive is not bootable.

Also, based on my talk with him last week the 1.2 million hours for MTBF
is only achievable if the drives are connected to special nearline
controllers that know what to do with the special features that this
firmware has.  He says that if the drive is connected to a regular
controller then it is basically just an AS drive and it drops back to
the 750,000 hours for MTBF.

Does this make any sense?  We will be buying 32 drives and I don't want
to buy the regular Barracudas if the ES drives will be better for us.
On the other hand, I don't want to wait another quarter, spend more
money, and then find that they work exactly the same way for us as the
AS drives because 3Ware and Areca controllers can't take advantage of
the ES features.

Thanks a lot for any light you can shed on this.

Steve

>
> 
>
>
>

--
 ________________________________________
______________________________
Steve Cousins, Ocean Modeling Group    Email: cousins@umit.maine.edu
Marine Sciences, 452 Aubert Hall       http://rocky.umeoce.maine.edu
Univ. of Maine, Orono, ME 04469        Phone: (207) 581-4302

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]