Specifications, Availability and Pricing

Seagate makes both 10 and 15K RPM drives for their Savvio Series and you can distinguish them apart by the model number quite easily. All Savvio drives are 2.5 inch form factor; the two newest models are the 15K.2 that we are reviewing here today and the 10K.3 that we will review shortly. Both of the drives offer support for SAS 2.0, the latest 6 Gb/s interface that just recently started to emerge on the market. For this review we are going to focus on the Seagate Savvio 15K.2.

Looking at the specifications list, the Savvio 15K.2 reminds us of the Cheetah 15K.7 that we reviewed just recently. Both drives share the same amount of cache and the performance is similar. The Cheetah series drives are Seagate's 3.5 inch form factor flagship models that are capable of more capacity, but that capacity comes at the cost of higher power consumption. That said, the 2.5 inch form factor drives use significantly less power than their 3.5 inch counterparts. 2.5 inch drives also produce less heat on average and of course you can fit more of them into the same amount of available space.

The Savvio 15K.2 is available in 73 and 146GB capacities. Other than the capacity differences, both drives share the same amount of cache and SAS 2.0 interface. After doing a few searches I was able to find the 73GB version for 220 USD and the 146GB for 266 from CDW. Obviously the better value when it comes to capacity to cost is the 146GB version that we are testing here today.

Let's dive in and have a look at the Seagate Savvio 15K.2.