Maxtor SAS hard drive achieves 3Gb/s data transfer milestone

Maxtor Corporation has announced verification of full-speed, 3Gb/s, operation between an LSI Logic Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) controller and an in-form-factor prototype Maxtor SAS disk drive with dual active ports.
Using the LSI Logic SAS1064 controller IC, Maxtor completed simultaneous read and write operations on both ports and verified 3Gb/s SAS I/O transfers in accordance with the SAS protocol and standards. To achieve this significant milestone, Maxtor integrated several key technologies, enabling queued read, write and compare commands across the SAS interface, and reading and writing data to and from the media.
SAS extends the capabilities of today’s parallel SCSI disk drives by adding a second port to the drive. Dual ports provide two separate data paths down to the drive to allow for higher levels of performance and eliminate any single point of failure, enabling the design of enterprise storage systems.
“Maxtor continues to set a leadership pace in the development of Serial Attached SCSI,” said Kevin Wittmer, director of technical marketing at Maxtor. “This announcement is significant because we have integrated several key new technologies to demonstrate an in-form-factor, dual-port SAS disk drive, interoperating with LSI Logic’s SAS controller. We are pleased to have reached this milestone because it is a proof point of our work toward Maxtor’s ‘Serial Storage in a Box’ initiative.”
As the SAS physical layer is compatible with SATA, users will have the choice of populating their systems with SAS hard drives, SATA hard drives or a combination of both. IT managers can use SATA drives for applications requiring the maximum capacity at the best cost, and SAS drives for performance-oriented applications that require high transaction rates. This provides high-availability, flexibility and scalability in one enclosure that can serve as a universal building block for constructing a data center’s storage infrastructure.
(GB)