Introduction

Technology is growing at an amazing rate. Every couple of years we experience some kind of major changes in the industry. Just about two years ago we reached new and higher speeds of transferring data from one in interface to another. With SATA/SAS 3 Gb/s many companies converted their SCSI interface environments in to SATA/SAS and saved alot of money on power and got increase in storage. Lets face it a SCSI hard drive would cost roughly 200$ for 140 GB. With the same 200$ we could purchase a 1 TB hard drive and save some money in the long run. It is time to move forward with the technology and now we are offered with SATA/SAS speeds up to 6 Gb/s and much higher storage options. Today we are going to be looking at a newest Seagate family member, Constellation ES 2 TB hard drives (ST32000644NS). This Constellation ES hard drives are SATA versions and run up to 3 Gb/s. Let us take a look at these drives and what they have to offer.

About the Product

Following information is taken from the Seagate website.

The Constellation ES drive extends the industry's leading enterprise-based 3.5-inch with its field-proven reliability into a high-capacity (up to 2 TB) nearline drive. Based on Seagate's superior enterprise experience, this drive is designed and built for the data center with an MTBF of 1.2 million hours for enterprise-grade reliability.

Constellation ES drives offer the world's highest capacity at 2TB while providing enterprise robustness for Tier 2/nearline environments. They are differentiated from 3.5-inch desktop drives by offering enterprise-class reliability and superior data integrity with a UER of 1E10-15. Enterprise-class rotational vibration tolerance provides robust protection from chassis and fan vibrations (RV 12.5 rad/sec 20 to 1500Hz). The drives are offered with either a 3-Gb/s SATA interface or a 6-Gb/s SAS 2.0 interface for superior data protection at industry-leading speeds, along with optional power saving modes with PowerChoice™ .

Key Advantages

• Fourth-generation, enterprise, nearline drive designed for 24×7 operation
• Up to 2TB capacity for data-hungry enterprise business applications
• Best-in-class enhanced rotational vibration tolerance ensures unrivalled performance in high-density applications for continuous data access.
• Enhanced effi ciencies with PowerChoice™ host-selectable power options for unprecedented savings (up to 35 percent) during slow or idle periods.
• Proven reliability with multi-drive fi rmware maximized for enterprise system availability.
• Robust performance with dual processor technology and ramp load technology.
• Provides business sustainability with Seagate Unifi ed Storage architecture.
- 6Gb/s SAS performance with error detection and correction (IOEDC/IOECC) capabilities for the ultimate in data integrity
- Government-grade Self-Encrypting Drive (SED) option for
TCG-compliant/AES-128 security cuts IT drive retirement costs while securely protecting data.¹

Best-Fit Applications

• High-capacity data center storage
• Storage area networks (SAN), network attached storage (NAS) and direct attached storage (DAS)
• Enterprise backup and restore—D2D, virtual tape
• Centralized surveillance
• Cloud storage

Specifications

Capacities 2TB, 1TB, 500GB
Interface(s) 6Gb/s SAS, SATA 3Gb/s
Spindle Speed 7200 RPM
Power (SAS) 8.0W typical idle, 12.2W operating, as low as 5.4W with PowerChoice™ option
Power (SATA) 7.0W typical idle, 11.2W operating, as low as 4.4W with PowerChoice option
Mean Time Between Failures 1.2 million hours at 24×7
Max. Sustained Transfer Rate 150MB/s (SAS), 140MB/s (SATA)
Cache Up to 64MB (2TB)

Now that we got basic information out of the way, lets take a closer look at Constellation ES.

Closer look

Seagate Constellation ES SATA		Model Number *ST32000644NS*

The outside appearance of Constellation ES is very much similar to some of the 3.5" hard drives you can find on the market but they have high quality enclosure which definitely stands out from the regular "desktop" hard drives. Since this is an enterprise level hard drives, many enterprise hard drives look similar to these. What's the difference between the regular desktop hard drive and an enterprise level hard drive? First of all Seagate Constellation offers world highest storage in the single hard drive. These drives offer superior data protection and long lasting performance far more superior to desktop hard drives. Seagate accomplishes the longevity of these drives by offering "Enterprise-class rotational vibration tolerance provides robust protection from chassis and fan vibrations".

Front Shot		Rear Shot

Constellation ES is based on Greet Technology from Seagate. We all doing our part in the word by saving on electricity and so does Seagate. By being a low power consumption units Constellation ES utilize less energy there fore costing you less in power and cooling. Using less cooling in data centers helps environment by minimizing the release of deadly gasses in to the atmosphere. This is been managed by Power Choice technology.

Sata connection		Enterprise quality

As mentioned earlier, these are SATA hard drives and should have maximum throughput of 3 Gb/s. The SAS version of Constellation ES provides a maximum throughput of 6 Gb/s and is predicted to be widely used in speed sensitive applications. The best place where you would find these hard drives used would be in a high capacity and high availability data centers. Constellation ES were designed to work 24x7 and to provide best performance as well as providing government grade encryption (sas only).

Power Edge 850		Power Edge 850

For our testing we are going to be using a mid range server Dell Power Edge 850. This Power Edge 850 is powered by a single Pentium D dual core proc (@3.2Ghz) and 2 Gb of Crucial pc2 4200 ram. We are also going to be using a Dell Sas 5 ira Raid controller card to Raid 1 Constellation ES hard drives.

Testing

After a few hours of installing Windows 2008 trial, we finally got a working system. We are going to be using HD Tach, Sandra and HD Tune pro benchmarks to perform evaluation of Constellation ES hard drives.

HD Tach 8 MB vs 32 MB

HD Tach benchmarks showed us that the average read speed of these drives about 115.4 MB/s and the burst speed of Constellation ES drives was anywhere from 182.8 MB/s to 196.2 MB/s. This is much higher than sata 150 and is expected to act as a sata II connection.

Sandra Benchmark Read

Read performance was measure by Sandra benchmark software. From this benchmark we got a clear view that the Drive index in read mode was 96.29 MB/s.

Sandra Benchmark Write

In order to perform write benchmark we had to wipe out our raid 1 and install OS on one drive and perform this benchmark in Sandra once again. Since the drive needs to be blank we could only perform this test on 1 hard drive. The write benchmark showed us that the Drive Index in Write mode was 93.87 MB/s.

HD Tune Pro Read Test

With HD Tune, we were concentrating on the Access time of the hard drives. In the read benchmark we got an access time of 12.8 ms. Kind of high for a hard drive but keeping in mind that this is a 2 TB hard drive, this is right in the average ballpark.

HD Tune Pro Write Test

In HD Tune Write test we have gotten access time of 13.2 ms. Relatively close to the access time in the read mode of the benchmark. If you look at Sandra benchmark and search for the access time on some of the other hard drives on the market, Constellation ES drives do pretty good competing. Lets face it, an extra 2 ms isn't going to play much of a role when serving database queries or writing files.

Conclusion

I can definitely see where Seagate is going with Constellation ES series hard drives. Offering faster speeds and cheaper storage, should be a no brainier who is going to be in competing with SCSI technology. SCSI is dying and being replaced with bigger and faster technologies such as Constellation ES. If you looking to convert your infrastructure to SAS/SATA i would definitely recommend. As i can see SATA II and SAS 6 Gb/s is only start. As 12 Gb/s technology is not that far a way and going to be utilizing some of the SAS/SATA interfaces, it is a good idea to start now. Constellation ES is a great start and not going to cost you an arm and a leg not like those SCSI hard drives. I personally think that Seagate is on the right track with Constellation ES series and i am sure this is not the end of the Enterprise line for Seagate. Great fast drives and great performance. 9/10!

Some pros we found:

High Capacity.

Best in class vibration tolerances.

Government approved encryption (sas only).

Enhanced with Power Choice.

Great transfer speeds.

Some cons we found:

High access time.