Decyphering Seagate drive model numbers?
- by Stefan Lasiewski
I'm comparing Seagate's Enterprise and Desktop drives for a variety of old and new servers. These servers come from different generations, so options like size (73GB, 2TB) and interface (SATA vs SAS 3.0Gbps vs SAS 6Gbps vs SCSI Ultra320) are widely variable.
I'm trying to compare the sizes, speeds and interfaces, but I'm getting thrown off by different models. Also, their website is not the best. Does anyone know of a documented explanation of the Seagate model numbers? And is there a single spreadsheet which compares the features for all drives (or all 'Enterprise' drives?).
Seagate drives have model numbers like this:
Model ST3600057SS 6-Gb/s SAS 600 GB None at Cheetah® 15K Hard Drives
Model ST373455LW Ultra320 SCSI 73.4 GB 68-Pin LW at Cheetah® 15K Hard Drives
Model ST32000644NS SATA 3Gb/s 2 TB None at Constellation™ ES Hard Drives
Model ST973452SS 6-Gb/s SAS 73 GB None Savvio® 15K Hard Drives
Model ST9200011FS SATA 3Gb/s 200 GB Pulsar™ Solid State Drives
I understand the model numbers read something like this:
ST - SOMETHING1 - SIZE - SOMETHING2 - INTERFACE
Where the fields mean something like this:
ST : For 'Seagate'? 'Seagate Technoligies'?
SOMETHING1 - This field has number, but I'm not sure what that represents.
SIZE - Size in Gigabytes. This is a number like '73' or '300' or '2000'
SOMETHING2 - This field also has a number, but I'm not sure what it means.
INTERFACE - This field seems to indicate the Interface. 'SS' means SAS, 'FC' means Fibre Channel, but I don't see how to distinguish between 6Gbps SAS and 3Gbps SAS, or different SATA or FC speeds.
I don't see a field which indicates the RPM (15K , 10K, 7.2K) etc. Is this part of the model number?
