Fujitsu MAS3735

Fujitsu MAS3735 Capacities Model Number Capacity MAS3184 18 GB MAS3367 36 GB MAS3735 73 GB Lowest Real-Time Price: Introduction Though they have been turning out enterprise-class drives for years, Japanese conglomerate Fujitsu has often been overlooked in the industry as the more visible competition released new products. Market giant Seagate, for example, always draws attention with announcements on its latest Cheetah models. Maxtor, continuing the legacy of Quantum's hard drive division, has caught the fancy of StorageReview.com readers. Even IBM (now Hitachi)'s enterprise storage division earns its fair share of notice despite some late-model releases that have failed to measure up when stacked against rival units.

With its outstanding 10,000 RPM MAP3147, Fujitsu has demonstrated that it is a force to be reckoned with. Though marginally outperformed by Maxtor's Atlas 10k IV, the MAP similarly outperforms Seagate's Cheetah 10k.6 in all areas. Further, the MAP hit general availability quite a bit earlier than the Atlas.

Now Fujitsu is taking aim at the Cheetah 15k.3 and the Atlas 15k with the MAS3735, their second entry into the high-performance, 15,000 RPM market. Like the Cheetah and Atlas, the MAS combines up to four 18-gigabyte platters to yield a flagship capacity of 73 GB. The firm claims an average read access time of just 3.3 milliseconds. An industry-standard eight-megabyte buffer rounds out the offering.

Interestingly, instead of sticking with the 2.58 inch platters standardized by the Cheetah (65 mm; also used in the Atlas 15k), Fujitsu has chosen to incorporate 2.78 inch (70 mm) media into the MAS. The increased radius affords the manufacturer a chance to incorporate more linear density into the product, albeit at the potential expenses of power consumption (heat) and flutter (noise).

With such formidable specs, the MAS guns for ultra-high-end applications such as heavy-duty file servers, high I/O transaction servers, and workstations that feature unusually heavy disk access. In short, a market in which the leading drive lays claim as "the fastest drive on earth."

Does the MAS deliver? Let's turn to the numbers!