Seagate´s venerable Cheetah series now features five-generations of tried-and-true 10,000 RPM spindle speed technology. The Cheetah 4LP broke new ground as the first drive to feature 10k RPM speeds as well as a sub 8 ms seek time. Its successor, the Cheetah 9LP, elevated things to a new level by shaving seek time down to just 5.2 milliseconds. Since then, however, Seagate´s 10k improvements have been evolutionary at best. Though the 18LP and the 36LP took advantage of ever-increasing areal densities to deliver higher capacities and transfer rates, access times remained constant. Seagate´s next-generation unit, however, finally features a reduced seek time. Do we speak of the 36XL?

Well, no, not quite ;). With its "XL" designation, the Cheetah 36XL is more of a "half-generation" update. The 36LP, after all, already delivered a Seagate low-profile 36 gig 10k unit. So what does the 4.5th generation 36XL offer? Improved areal densities and a resulting platter count decrease, of course. The 36XL requires just 4 platters do deliver its 36 gigs of capacity. Buffer size, at 4 megs, remains unchanged. Spindle speed, of course, is 10k.