Seagate NL35.2 Series, ST3500641NS 500GB drive

INTRODUCTION

With larger operating systems such as Windows Vista™ on the horizon and the size of software applications growing by linear proportions, hard drive manufacturers have responded in kind with larger, faster, and even cheaper storage options. I can remember watching a technical TV show in the not to distant past where the goal of the day was to build a workstation that contained 1 terabyte (1,000,000,000,000 bytes) of PATA disk storage. At the time, it required the use of a huge server style enclosure plus an additional external disk enclosure with a total of 9 or 10 disk drives to attain that lofty goal. We're also talking speeds in the DMA4 range of 66 MB/s maximum I/O data transfer rates, which were rarely if ever attainable.

Wow, what a difference time and technology makes! With the advent of SATA drives and their respective controllers, the I/O data transfer rates are rated at 1.5 and even 3 Gb/s for the latest generation of drives. The speeds of these newer drives, even though very high, again are rarely attained due to other system bottlenecks. With the capacities of these drives currently in the 500GB+ range, it is very easy to have 1 terabyte of storage in smaller mid-tower and even desktop style multimedia cases. I guess size really does matter! I will even be so bold as to predict that we'll see single drives in the 1+ terabyte range within the next six months.

For the longest time, when one thought of the professional workstation or server environment, we associated the then considerably faster, and equally more expensive SCSI drives with this type of venture. Such is no longer the case, as the migration to SATA derivations of these drives is rapidly taking place. The once "King of the Hill" SCSI drive has almost been matched speed wise by SATA. The biggest reason for changing to the new technology in addition to speed is the cost per gigabyte of storage. You can now easily purchase a SATA drive that is four to even six times larger in capacity for the same price as its SCSI counterparts. Up until the last month or two, the only check marks in the SCSI column were associated with longevity or mean time between failure (MTBF) and their ability to repeatedly access data for true high duty-cycle enterprise workloads.

Today, we're going to review a drive that may play a role in in removing one of the remaining two check marks, longevity. Seagate recently introduced the new NL35™ series of SATA drives which they call "Near Line" that takes direct aim at the workstation/entry-level server environment. A quote from Seagate states: "The NL35™ Series drives are designed for workloads that fall between enterprise workloads and desktop computer or entry-level server workloads. NL35 Series drives are not appropriate for true high duty-cycle enterprise workloads." Hmmm! A niche market for drives or a stepping stone to the future? Please join me for a look at the Seagate ST3500641NS, 500 GB SATA Drive to ascertain if the differences this product brings to the table truly indicate this product's future is as bright as the manufacturer's literature suggests.

FUNCTIONALITY & SPECIFICATIONS

First, before we move into the heart of this review, let's allow Seagate to answer a few questions that may be foremost on your mind about this new series of drives.

What’s the difference between SATA and nearline SATA?

Conventional SATA drives are optimized for desktop and low-cost server applications, which have less rigorous workloads and one or two drives per system. Nearline drives are designed to be more reliable when used in systems designed for nearline applications. Nearline applications are capacity-intensive, are powered on 24x7, but require infrequent reading and writing of data. Examples of nearline applications are disc-based backup/recovery, e-mail archiving, compliance archives, temporary data copies and medical image storage.

How does the NL35 Series performance compare with Barracuda SATA drives?

Under normal conditions, NL35 Series performance will be identical to a Barracuda SATA drive. In workload conditions beyond what the NL35 Series was designed for, the Workload Management feature for the NL35 Series may temporarily reduce read/write performance to enhance reliability in these situations.

When should I use NL35 Series instead of Barracuda drives?

For systems designed for capacity-intensive, multi-user applications that include many drives (four or more is a good rule of thumb). These applications are typically powered on 24x7, but have low disc drive read/write duty cycles. For these systems, the nearline features of NL35 Series are needed to operate and manage large numbers of drives, and to prevent high drive failure rates.

What new features will be available on the NL35 Series 500-Gbyte drive?

NL35 Series 500 will use a SATA 3Gb/s interface, as well as improved RV tolerance and enhancements to the nearline firmware feature set. (Current NL35 Series SATA is a 3-disc design; NL35 Series 500 is a 4-disc design).