Open hard disk drives with visible components.

Performance Enterprise

Hard drive manufacturers design drives that will perform well for their largest customers, or sets of customers. This is why “classes” of drives exist.

Design Expectations

The information below is a high-level set of expectations the drive manufacturers have when designing, testing, and selling “Performance Enterprise” drives.

Performance Enterprise
Power On Hours24 hrs/7 days (8760 POH)
Write / Read Ratio60/40
Block SizesRandom
Seek ProfileRAID Striped w/Parity

Design Details

The “Performance Enterprise” class of drives represents the manufacturer's offerings where throughput, I/O (input/output) performance, and reliability are the highest possible given a volume production and pricing business model. Performance Enterprise drives using traditional HDD technology are either 10K or 15K rpm spin rate, SAS interface, and under 2TB in capacity (with most models being under 1TB).

Hybrid HDD/SSD technology has also been introduced in this class, and a growing part of the market is incorporating enterprise solid state drives (SSD). In addition to the snapshot of features below, Performance Enterprise class drives feature very robust componentry throughout their design.

Drive Features

The table below is an excerpt from the HDSTOR Drive Comparison Table, which shows features (or lack thereof) of the different classes of drives, as well as relative performance, reliability, and cost.

Performance Enterprise
Production Screening?YES
Rated for 24/7 Use?YES
Fixed Shaft Spindle?YES
RV Feed Forward Sensors?YES
Time Limited Retry Tables?YES
Performance Enterprise
Workload RatingEXTREME
Firmware TuningRandom Access/ RAID
Performance CapabilitiesVERY HIGH
Reliability RatingsVERY HIGH
CostVERY HIGH