Seagate announced it will begin shipping its new Cheetah 15K.6 hard drive this month. This drive offers a 28% increase in sustained data transfer rates compared to previous generations. With this new performance on tap, the Cheetah 15K.6 drive remarkably consumes significantly less power, using up to 61% less watts/GB at idle.

Using second-generation perpendicular recording technology and available in capacities of 450GB, 300GB, and 147GB, the new Cheetah 15K.6 drive provides an unprecedented blend of storage capacity and performance. Add to this the highest 3.5-inch hard drive reliability in the industry at 1.6 million hours MTBF (0.55% AFR), a choice of Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) or Fibre Channel (FC) interfaces, and a 5-year warranty, and the Cheetah 15K.6 drive becomes the clear drive of choice for 3.5-inch SAN, NAS, and other transactional processing and internet applications.

The Cheetah 15K.6 drive includes Seagate PowerTrim technology which dynamically optimizes drive power consumption at all levels of activity. The Cheetah 15K.6 drive lowers idle and operational power requirements from its prior generation - as much as 61% in watts/GB at idle - while increasing overall sustained data transfer rates by 28% at 164MB/sec.