Enterprise-performance HDDs tout 12Gb/s SAS support

Toshiba Corp. has unveiled its latest enterprise performance hard disk drive (HDD) line aimed at mission critical servers and high-performance, high-availability storage systems. The AL14SE is the company's first 10,500 rotations per minute (RPM) HDD to support 12Gb/s SAS and 512n sector length.

The AL14SE features a four platter design increasing storage capacity by 33 per cent over the previous AL13SE generation models. It is also updated with a 128MB data buffer for improved performance. The AL14SE family of HDDs provides 12Gb/s dual-ported SAS support and 512n sector models in industry standard capacities of 300GB, 450GB, 600GB, 900GB and 1200GB.

This HDD is geared to support OEM customisations of value-add features such as optional RAID rebuild assist and optional self-encryption feature sets. The standard 12Gb/s SAS feature provides auto-negotiation to 6Gb/s SAS for legacy host controllers, enabling compatibility within legacy hardware platforms and host controllers.

The AL14SE is suited for server and storage systems and applications requiring a balance between storage capacity and performance in virtualised storage environments.

Sample shipment has begun.