A customer needs to implement an enterprise storage solution with the lowest cost per gigabyte Which drive technology should the customer use?

SATA drives lack dual-port connectivity and enterprise-grade error recovery features, making them unsuitable for direct integration into most enterprise storage arrays despite low consumer pricing.

ATA-II is a legacy parallel interface standard that has been superseded by serial technologies and is no longer used in modern enterprise storage solutions.

SAS nearline (NL-SAS) drives achieve the lowest cost per gigabyte in enterprise storage by using high-capacity, 7.2K RPM platters while retaining dual-port SAS connectivity for redundancy and enterprise supportability. Enterprise arrays position NL-SAS as the high-capacity cost tier, delivering better dollar-per-gigabyte than 10K or 15K SAS drives while remaining fully compatible with enterprise storage controllers and service agreements. This distinguishes SAS from legacy and consumer-grade alternatives that lack enterprise qualification.

Parallel SCSI is an older, legacy protocol with limited drive capacity, constrained bus scalability, and higher per-unit cost, resulting in a higher cost per gigabyte than modern SAS.