Seagate Savvio 15K

15,000 RPM in a laptop-sized hard drive. Can I get an amen?

Savvio. Sounds like the name of an old Italian fruit shop owner. Raptor. Sounds like the name of a vicious dog. Don't jump to conclusions about which is more powerful just yet. Savvio's got mob connections.

Seagate's Savvio hard drive is made for the server and industrial computing market. Its interface looks similar to a SATA drive, but it's not -- it’s a Serially Attached SCSI (SAS) drive. It’s designed to be slotted into fearsome 19” rack mount servers by the dozen and then lashed together into RAID setups. Yes, you can use them in your own PC, but it’ll cost you. More on this later.

Unformatted, the single platter version weighs in at 36.6GB and the two platter version at 73.4GB. Look at the rest of the specifications though and you’d expect the Savvio to wipe the floor with Western Digital's Raptor. The 2.5” drive runs at 15,000 RPM, which means that not only should its transfer speeds be roughly a third faster, but access times should be reduced too. This isn’t only because the heads have a smaller platter area to cover in a 2.5” drive compared to a 3.5” drive, but the Savvio supports perpendicular recording, and the Raptor doesn’t. Speaking of which, and for comparison, the Raptor is a 3.5" drive running at 10,000 RPM.

That's a sparkling floor right there.

We thought our reference Raptors got hot during use, but the Savvios redefined the term blistering heat. After running for half an hour on the bench without active cooling, they simply became too hot to touch for more than a second. However in a properly cooled server room and behind fan-forced server drive caddies, this ceases to be a problem.

The SAS interface is what’s standing between you and a Savvio of your very own. SAS controllers can address SAS and SATA drives; however SATA controllers can only address SATA drives. Even though the physical SAS connectors come in various shapes and sizes (including Mini SAS, External SAS and -- most importantly -- SATA), SAS drives will only work with SAS controllers, even though you can use a converter cable to plug them into a SATA port connected to your SATA controller in your motherboard’s southbridge.

If you’re still desperate to get your hands on a Savvio (and we can hardly blame you) you’ll need a SAS controller. Most of them are made for PCI-X, although a small, difficult to find handful are made for PCI-e 8x. Be aware that you’ll have to pay no less than $400 for one.

On this basis, comparing a Raptor to a Savvio is unfair, but nonetheless it does demonstrate the gap between the highest grade consumer hard drives and high end server gear. And this is where they will be welcomed with open arms, as small drives save space and by extension server room size. 15,000 RPM drives have been available in the ‘money isn’t a problem, the clients must be happy’ end of the IT market for years now, but this is the first time that we have seen that kind of speed in a 2.5” drive.

A Seagate spokesperson told us the company has no current plans to release a SATA version of the Savvio, or produce any other type of 15,000 RPM drive for the consumer market. Its reasoning is that the drives are made for enterprise applications. Pure assumption here, but we’re guessing it would be because Seagate can’t rely on consumers providing proper cooling for the drives. These things are hot like insanity chili peppers, and if too many of them are run without server-style cooling failure rates will increase; killing their reputation and raising warranty returns.

Sorry guys.