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  1. #1
    Join Date
    Apr 2004
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    2.5" inch laptop drives for my new colo box?? What the..?!

    Hi there,

    I ordered a new server... ah, looking forward to blistering fast speeds... with 7200 RPM SATA drives. The quote said they were 2.5" drives.

    I get the server, look under the hood... They're LAPTOP drives!

    WD 1200BEVS (WD Scorpio), listed as 5400 RPM!

    Is this normal?? I mean, this thing has to burn at 85% CPU 24 hours a day.
    Should we return it and what manufacturer should we suggest for the drives? I can't seems to even find 2.5" SATA drives for non-laptop use.

  2. #2
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    What were they going in cyman? We have a number of customers here with Mac Mini's, those have laptop drives. Also, they do make a higher RPM (7200) 2.5" drives.

    Google 2.5" 7200 and you will find a whole host of drives that fit this configuration.

    What was the server btw that these are going in?
    Jeremy Kinsey (jer@mia.net) - 262-248-6759
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  3. #3
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    It's becoming increasingly common to see 2.5" drives in servers.

    All of the new Compaq DL380G5s we've been deploying have 2.5" Serial Attached SCSI drives. The 2.5" drives use less power and run cooler so they're becoming quite popular in the enterprise space.
    Eric Spaeth
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  4. #4
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    Dell is offering 2.5" (or with the standard 3.5") drives on most of their rackmount servers these days. 1950, 2950, 2970, etc.

    The Mac Mini is where they first showed up outside of laptops in 2005, but expect to see them everywhere going forward. 2.5" are not just for laptops anymore.
    --chuck goolsbee, Prineville, Oregon, USA
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  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by digitalforest View Post
    Dell is offering 2.5" (or with the standard 3.5") drives on most of their rackmount servers these days. 1950, 2950, 2970, etc.
    Too bad, they do not offer 2.5" SATA 7200 rpm drives.

    But even at 5400 rpms, since you can put more 2.5" drives than 3.5 drives, you can still get the same amount of IOPS. E.g. Six 7200 rpms drives in RAID10 gives the same IOPS as eight 5400 rpm drives. For the same space, you can perhaps fit 1.33 times more 2.5" drives than 3.5" drives. In which case, the total IOPS on these drives win.

    Unfortunately, there is no high capacity 2.5" drives
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  6. #6
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    2.5" SAS drives are becoming increasingly common, but they generally run at 10K or 15K RPM. They are enterprise server drives, and their size actually gives them some performance benefits.

    In your case, it sounds like you're using a 5400RPM SATA drive, which would generally be used in a laptop. I'd certainly be concerned about performance. It lists a 12ms seek time, which isn't so great for the random I/O loads that servers have to deal with.
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  7. #7
    The scorpio is definitely marketed as a laptop drive.

    There is nothing inherently wrong with a 2.5 inch form factor. But, what should be considered is rotational speed, cache, and INTERFACE.

    The only 2.5 inch drives of interest to me for server use are SAS drives not SATA or PATA.
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  8. #8
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    What's the biggest 2.5" SATA 7200 rpm drives? I have only seen 200 GB so far.
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  9. #9
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    Aug 2001
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    Quote Originally Posted by FHDave View Post
    What's the biggest 2.5" SATA 7200 rpm drives? I have only seen 200 GB so far.

    I upgraded my MacBook with a 200GB 7200. I think that's the largest out there so far from Toshiba.
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  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nich View Post
    I upgraded my MacBook with a 200GB 7200. I think that's the largest out there so far from Toshiba.
    I did the same recently... I've not seen one larger, but it does not mean there is not.
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  11. #11
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    Western Digital and Samsung both offer 320gb 5400rpm 2.5" sata drives.

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...643&name=320GB

  12. #12
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    But he was asking for the largest 7200RPM drives, not 5400...
    Jeremy Kinsey (jer@mia.net) - 262-248-6759
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  13. #13
    how about the life timespan of 2.5" drive compared to 3.5" drive? isn't it produce a lot of heat?
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  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris_M View Post
    Western Digital and Samsung both offer 320gb 5400rpm 2.5" sata drives.

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...643&name=320GB
    7200 rpm, not 5400 rpm
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  15. #15
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    My bad, I saw the 5400rpm part of the Op's post and it just sort of stuck in my head.

  16. #16
    The biggest SAS drives seem to be 146GB.

    A far cry from what we're used to in 3.5 inch form factor.

    Those new 380DL's look sweet though.
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  17. #17
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    2.5's sure come in handy when you are trying to squeeze in as many drives into a 2U server...

    I swear some of the 2.5" SAS drives I've seen were 15k... (they were in Dells)

    PS. 5400 isn't good. Unless it is in an array as suggested before. bottomline, if you signed up for a server with 7200RPM drives and that isnt what you got, I'd file a complaint.
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  18. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cybercon View Post
    I swear some of the 2.5" SAS drives I've seen were 15k... (they were in Dells)
    http://cuddletech.com/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=856

    Ben Rockwood talks about the 15k drives in 2.5" format
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  19. #19
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    Nov 2004
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    SATA and IDE 2.5" drives are TOTALLY DIFFERENT BEASTS than the new SAS 2.5" drives.

    The 2.5" SATA/IDE drives are laptop drives. Even if they spin at the same RPM, they'll be slower because they have less cache and are made to consume less power.

    2.5" SAS server drives, on the other hand, are made to be very fast drives which consume lots of power. They're small because seek times are better if your platter is smaller, and it saves space too.

    Don't confuse those two.

  20. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by plumsauce View Post
    The biggest SAS drives seem to be 146GB.

    A far cry from what we're used to in 3.5 inch form factor.

    Those new 380DL's look sweet though.
    The biggest SCSI disk you're going to get is 300GB, so it isn't THAT big of a difference.
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  21. #21
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    My fujitsu notebook uses 1.8" drive. One day, we will move from 2.5" to 1.8". How many of these drives can you fit in 2U? Perhaps some 60-80 of them. Wonder if the number of drives will win the IOPS game for larger and faster drives.
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  22. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by KarlZimmer View Post
    The biggest SCSI disk you're going to get is 300GB, so it isn't THAT big of a difference.
    400GB actually, Seagate SAS
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  23. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by KDAWebServices View Post
    400GB actually, Seagate SAS
    well, seagate decided to market some SAS drives with the new 7200rpm Barracuda ES2 SAS line:
    http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/pro...arracuda_es.2/
    ST31000640SS: 1TB SAS, 7200rpm
    ST3750630SS: 750G SAS, 7200rpm
    ST3500620SS: 500G SAS, 7200rpm
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  24. #24
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    Don't get me started on their ES line, Enterprise my rear.
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  25. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by cwl@apaqdigital View Post
    well, seagate decided to market some SAS drives with the new 7200rpm Barracuda ES2 SAS line:
    http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/pro...arracuda_es.2/
    ST31000640SS: 1TB SAS, 7200rpm
    ST3750630SS: 750G SAS, 7200rpm
    ST3500620SS: 500G SAS, 7200rpm
    Cool. But now, that's confusing. The average latency of ~4 ms puts it in the class of SCSI drives. The rotational speed of 7200 rpm put it in the class of SATA. The HD size (500 GB, 750 G, 1000 GB) also puts it in the class of SATA drives. So what is it? And why do they offer both SAS and SATA interface? Aren't they interchangeable?
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