Fujitsu MAU3147

Note: Since the publication of this review, this drive has been retested under Testbed4, a newer hardware/software/benchmark platform. Please see this article for updated results. This review remains for reference purposes only.

Fujitsu MAU3147NP Capacities Model Number Capacity MAU3036Nx 37 GB MAU3073Nx 74 GB MAU3147Nx 147 GB Lowest Real-Time Price: Introduction Over the past two years, Fujitsu's mighty MAS3735 has held StorageReview's top Leaderboard spot, the Server- Performance slot (formerly 15,000 RPM Drive) by delivering the best multi-user performance around combined with desktop performance that vied with Maxtor's Atlas 15K for top honors.

Like competitors Seagate, Maxtor, and Hitachi, however, Fujitsu's climb to the next plateau of capacity and performance has been a long one. Increasingly prominent limitations in media and head technology along with the need to maintain the rock-solid reputation of enterprise-oriented SCSI offerings have stayed the hands of all players and kept drives such as the MAS and the Cheetah 15K.3 in the spotlight for an unprecedented length of time.

Last week, Seagate's Cheetah 15K.4 met Testbed3. With its user-toggleable buffer segmentation strategy set to a static, desktop-oriented setting, the 15K.4 managed to slightly improve upon the single-user performance marks set by the last generation. However, even with segmentation settings switched to the default "server-oriented mode", the 15K.4's multi-user scores actually retreated from the levels obtained by the older 73-gigabyte flagships.

Fujitsu's MAU3147 is next up to the plate. The specs of the Japanese conglomerate's new 15,000 mainstay read identically to that of the Cheetah 15K.4- four 37-gigabyte platters to top out at 147 GB of storage, a 3.3 millisecond access time, and an eight-megabyte buffer. Fujitsu warrants the drive with standard five-year protection.

Initial shipments of the MAU3147 will include standard parallel Ultra320 and Fibre Channel interfaces. Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)'s time is almost upon us however- it is not unreasonable to expect an SAS version of the drive once controllers and other support infrastructure hit the market.

As a new-breed 15,000 RPM drive, the MAU targets the most demanding storage applications around: heavy-load file and web servers, data mining/warehousing, busy transaction servers, and other uses where best-of-breed random access performance is mandatory. In the following tests, the MAU3147 will be compared against the following drives for the following reasons:

Fujitsu MAS3735 (73 GB)	Manufacturer's previous-generation unit
Hitach Ultrastar 15K73 (73 GB)	Previous-generation competing unit
Maxtor Atlas 15K (73 GB)	Previous-generation competing unit
Seagate Cheetah 15K.4 (147 GB)	Current-generation competing unit