GreenBytes is qualifying 1TB, 2.5-inch drives, and by a process of elimination we think we've spotted signs of another new Seagate product.

GreenBytes uses 7200rpm 2.5-inch SATA drives in its GB-1000 product and SAS or SATA drives in the same form factor in its larger GB-2000 and GB-4000 products.

Barbara Craig, a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Seagate, has blogged about GreenBytes, saying what a breath of fresh air the company is. So clearly it's using Seagate drives, and we reckon they're Seagate's 500GB, 7200rpm Constellation product.

Rich Shea, GreenBytes' VP for sales, said this about the GB-4000 product, currently scaling to 216TB capacity: "In four weeks we'll scale to 432TB. The limit is the number of drive connections. Today we use 500GB Drives. We're working to get 1TB ones qualified."

When asked whose product is being qualified he said "several suppliers", mentioning Hitachi GST as one of them.

Hitachi GST doesn't have a 1TB, 2.5-inch enterprise drive in its lineup as far as we know. That's a hint then that Hitachi GST has such a drive coming. There is no Seagate 1TB Constellation 2.5-inch drive announced yet, so it looks like Seagate has a 1TB 2.5-inch Constellation coming too, and that quite quickly.

Toshiba may also have a 1TB, enterprise-class 2.5-incher up its sleeve as well.

This information follows quite closely to the story about Compellent looking forward to using a 900GB, 10K, 2.5-inch drive, and a 300GB 15K one. It looks as if Seagate is aiming to send a small form factor drive blitz our way.

GreenBytes is also looking to add 8Gbit/s Fibre Channel connectivity to its unified storage (iSCSI plus NAS) arrays by the end of the summer. ®