MAS3735NP SCSI Hard Drive - 73.5GB Capacity SCSI Fujitsu $599.99 http://www.fujitsu.com Sean Gibson - email

INTRODUCTION

Fujitsu is no stranger to the Hard Drive scene, and big time upgraders and novices to their computers both recognize the brand name which has developed a fantastic mindshare for quality. Now, Fujitsu has released a series of high-performance, high-quality SCSI 15K RPM Hard Drives aimed at power users and enterprise solutions. Ultra320 SCSI Drives offer data transfer rates at a ridiculous 320MB/s (compare that with the latest in IDE solutions which offer 133MB/s), and Fujitsu slaps on a 5 year warranty on their drives to ensure customer satisfaction.

If you're wondering why you should move to a faster spindle speed, the answer is relatively simple. For example, if you wanted to store 360GB of data and minimize access time to that data. If you store this data on ten 15K.3 drives, the average seek time plus latency is 5.6 msec. Ultra320 SCSI increases the maximum burst transfer rates to 320MBytes/sec, provides differential data integrity, extends the SCSI bus cable lengths to 25 meters and provides easy system config for up to 16 devices. The 320Mbytes/sec doubles the Ultra160 drives, and is light years ahead of the SCSI-1 standard used in 1992.

Let now check out this high performing drive to see if it's what Fujitsu claims it is!

description of technology

The 15K.3 SCSI drive provides industry-leading speed and reliability for I/O-intensive applications, which translates into lower client response times and increased I/O ability for large file storage and transport. Because the drive has much faster time-to-data than the newest 10K drives, it delivers up to 40 percent more IOPS (Input/Output operations per second) than 10K drives for the majority of performance applications. This means that to support a certain level of IOPS and maintain a certain response time for a group of clients, fewer 15K are required than would be if the workload were handled by 10K drives.

So what does fewer drives mean for the IT manager?

It means greater reliability because the system will have a lower spindle count. The fewer drives means fewer HDAs, less cabling and lower overall drive cost. It also means less space require to hold the drives, so it translates into denser performance.

Best fit applications?

Workstations, mid-level to high-end servers, storage area networks, network attached storage, RAID storage arrays, filing and printing, EMA/Groupware, databases, data mining, CAD, Data Streaming, and intensive graphic applications.

installation

We used an Adaptec SCSI Card 39320D, a two-channel Ultra320 SCSI controller, and the MAS3735NP installed with a tremendous amount of ease. Using our standard performance driven computer running Windows XP, the drive installs amazingly well.

It's important to remember when you in a Windows XP setting, that the drive won't just magically pop up in the "My Computer" area much like IDE drives do. What you need to do is activate the drive via right clicking on "My Computer" then selecting "Manage" then select on "Disk Management". There you can activate the drive. After the drive is "activated" it can be formatted in NTFS. After running through the Manage utility, the drive was installed...so the entire installation process (including formatting the drive in the operating system) takes about 20 minutes - amazing considering the size of the hard drive!

specifications

The specs of the drive itself.

Some very impressive numbers to say the least. Obviously, reliability comes in the form of over a million hours of expected run-time, and backed by a very comfortable 5 year warranty. The 8MB buffer size is nice, and the average seek times between 3.3 (read) and 3.8 (write) are particularly impressive.

test results

First we used the ancient but still widely used WinBench 99 to test out the Fujitsu MAS drive, and also tested the results and compared them to the Seagate Cheetah drive we reviewed some months back...

As you can plainly see the Fujistu drive outperformed the older Seagate drive almost across the board in all the tests - most significantly in the High-end Disk Benchmark.

Next we look at results from Intel's IOmeter...

Same deal as the last test - the Fujitsu MAS drive performs slightly better than its Seagate counterpart.

Overall Impressions

If you're wondering why you should invest in an Ultra320 SCSI Hard Drive solution, it comes down to two things : 1) Dependability and 2) Performance. Home consumers will find the speed transfer I/O rates unparalleled for video editing, graphic design, gaming, and any other intensive application. Professional graphic designers and professional video editing will love the seamless work flow rate from the drive. Best yet, network administrators will find the ease of installation, amazing reliability, and performance of the drive to be exactly what they're looking for in a drive.

I'm duly impressed with the quality of the Fujitsu MAS drive, and the numbers we got were impressive as it outperformed it's direct rival. We took a while on this review for one very specific reason - we wanted to use this sucker as much as possible to see if this so-called "Fujitsu Reliability" was all it is cracked up to be. We didn't want to simply install and run the numbers and write the review - how could that possibly speak for reliability? After swapping the hard drive's entire capacity over 20 times in a period of 2 months, and constantly using the drive for about 2 hours intensly per day during that period, this drive didn't flinch. We took it out, put it on another system, brought it back ... you get the picture. We put this hard drive through some pretty difficult conditions, and it never gave us one single problem.

If you're looking for a quality 15K RPM SCSI drive, then Fujitsu's MAS line of drives have to be on the top of your shopping list. Great features, quality manufacturing, outperforming the competition, and great reliability are the main reasons why we're very impressed with our first look at a Fujitsu product. These Ultra320 drives aren't cheap - you can find the 73GB version on-line for about $599, but the reasons for the high price point are obvious. Considering other prices for products in this category, it isn't all that bad. Network admins and power users are highly recommended to check out the MAS line, it definitely impressed us.

10 / 10 OVERALL SCORE 96% 10 / 10 8 / 10 10 / 10 10 / 10 9.6 / 10