15Krpm SCSI - Fujitsu or Seagate ?

[L3Guy]

Can anyone what the difference is between the following:

ST318452LW Ultra160 SCSI
ST318453LW Ultra320 SCSI

Yes. The 52 is a "15K.2" or second generation drive. The 53 is a "15k.3" or third generation drive.
Both drives are great, but the newer 15K.3 drive is about 10% faster than the 15k.2 when they each use the Ultra 160 controller.
Since the peak read speed of the 15K.3 drive is about 100 MB/s, it would be advantagous to use a 320 controler (or multiple scsi chains) if you thought that 3 or more drives on the same scsi chain would be used simultaniously. There is no difference in speed between U160 and U320 on a single drive at this time.

My recomendation is to go for the 15k.3.

HTH

Doug

 

[dajo]

Just ordered the ST318453LW Cheetah 15k.3 and the LSIU160-WB kit - said it came with SCSI cable.

Hope I ordered the right stuff!

Thanks again for all your support. This was one of the most responsive and pleasant hardware forum experiences I've ever had.

Cannot wait to rev her up! Now I'm glad that outpost.com cancelled my order for the Maxtor Ultra 8MB 80GB IDE drive!

 

[techietam]

Can someone enlighten me why IBM claimed that their Z15 was gonna be
25%(!) faster than it's X15 competitor be4 Z15 release?
So, without reading any reviews I got me Z15 to find out later that this
claim was complete BS :|

Now I keep looking @ 15.3 Cheetah and my CC for obvious reason...

 

[mechBgon]

I have the Cheetah X15-36LP and it really surprised me with the low noise level. Turns out Seagate had sneaked a fluid-dynamic-bearing motor into them, and have carried on with that for the 15k.3 family (although not the 10k.3, which are ball-bearing). Seeks are pleasantly audible. Sometimes it has made that "you-left-your-turn-signal-on" noise... tick, tick, tick, tick... but lately either it's stopped or I've stopped noticing it. Good drive, anyway, as long as I don't run out of room with 18Gb (half full now).

 

[dajo]

Set up new Cheetah 15k.3 with fresh install of WinXP Pro. Drive is very fast and very quiet. I never hear it at idle and don't even notice it during seeks. It produces what I would describe as a sound level just barely above IDE drives during defrag.

It also runs surprisingly cool, and seems to be a lot cooler to the touch than the 80GB WDC SE I use as my storage drive.

Thanks again. I'm glad I got it!

 

[andrey]

I'm running Seagate Cheetah 15K.3 on Adaptec 39160 and all I can tell you is that this combo rocks! The Seagate drive is quiet, fast and runs cool. As a matter of fact, 15K.3 is the fastest and quietest 15,000 rpm hard drive on the market.

Here is a very good StorageReview article about Seagate 15K.3, so you'll have an idea why everyone is so much impressed with that drive.

 

[Peter]

Granted ... but if you want an equally fast dual channel U160 SCSI controller, you better buy a Tekram 390U3W or D for half of what the Adaptec costs. You get LSI's 64-bit, 66 MHz PCI (backward compatible to 32-bit 33 MHz) dual channel SCSI engine, LSI's own BIOS and drivers, and an excellent retail pack with piles of (otherwise expensive) cables. The D model has twin U160 channels, while the W one has one U160 and one legacy UW/U.

regards, Peter