This article is more than 1 year old

Seagate adds FIFTY PER CENT more capacity to new NAS drive

Similar specs but subtle differences

Seagate has increased the capacity of its enterprise NAS drive, lengthened its warranty, and increased the NAS box slot count.

The existing Enterprise NAS drive holds up to 4TB, has a three-year warranty and is suitable for 1-5 bay NAS enclosures. The nice new one holds up to 6TB, has a five-year warranty, and is suitable for 1-16 bay NAS enclosures.

Both drives spin at 7200rm and gave a 6Gbit/s SATA interface. We asked Seagate about the differences between the old and new NAS drives and the roughly similarly specced Enterprise Capacity drive:

El Reg How does the Enterprise NAS HDD differ from the Enterprise Capacity HDD? They have the same capacities and 7200rpm speed.

Seagate The new Enterprise NAS HDD differs greatly from the NAS HDD and the Enterprise Capacity. For starters, it's a combination of the two drives.

We have taken the bare mechanics of the Enterprise Capacity HDD while we borrow NAS optimisation firmware and performance from the NAS HDD. These leveraged items deliver a drive that is ... stripped of [the] bells and whistles that you normally get with a true nearline drive but still delivers enterprise-class reliability with NAS-optimised performance. We've done this to develop a drive suited for the growing SMB segment that needs more robust HDD, yet still needs the NAS optimisations.

El Reg Why is it suitable for a 1-16 bay NAS enclosure while the previous 4TB Enterprise NAS drive was suitable for 1-5 bay enclosures?

Seagate The NAS HDD positioning was extended from 1-5 bays to 1-8 bays because they are being used primarily in a home, SOHO or very small business environment, and the workload would allow more drives in a bay. The Enterprise NAS HDD has more robust mechanics and RV sensors that allow it go into even larger rackmount systems, up to 16 bays.

El Reg How has it been made possible to extend the warranty from three to five years?

Seagate The Enterprise NAS HDD is built closer to an enterprise specification, so we purposely designed it to a five-year warranty, like the solutions it will go into.

The Storage Vulture's view

Judging by the physical size of the drive this could be a 4-platter unit with 1.5TB platters. An alternative is that Seagate has squeezed 5 x 1.2TB platters into it. We've asked the question but haven't t heard back yet.

The Enterprise NAS HDD is supported by Seagate’s optional Rescue Data Recovery plans with a more than a 90 per cent success rate of getting data back from damaged disk drives.

These plans also cover NAS HDDs targeting the SOHO and prosumer NAS market and Surveillance HDDs, targeting video surveillance systems.

QNAP has signed up to take the 6TB Enterprise HASS drive range and, Seagate says it "will be used in solutions manufactured by the other top players addressing the mid-range NAS market". ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like