deskstar

Hitachi ships 1TB-per-platter desktop hard drive

Hitachi announced today that it's now shipping hard drives in the Deskstar and Cinemastar desktop families that are based on the new 1TB-per-platter technology. These are the company's first drives that achieve this milestone of areal density.

In the Deskstar family, Hitachi is shipping the Deskstar 7K1000.D and Deskstar 5K1000.B; in the Cinemastar family, there are the Cinemastar 7K1000.D and Cinemastar 5K1000.B. In both cases, the 7K1000 drives are high performers that spin at 7,200rpm; the 5K1000 drives are those with Hitachi's CoolSpin technology that enables the drive to use up to 23 percent less energy while idling.

Hitachi says the Deskstar family is for desktop computers, and the Cinemastar family is optimized for use in audio and video applications, such as storage-based TVs and DVRs.

Despite the fact that the new drives support the highest areal density among hard drives currently on the market, they offer only up to 1TB of storage space. They do use just one platter (as opposed to two more platters) and therefore might use less energy, and they are thinner than other, standard drives.

All the new drives support SATA 3 (6Gbps) and have 32MB of cache memory. They are available now but it's unclear how much they cost.… Read more

Hitachi's hard drives join the 3TB club

Only a few companies have storage solutions based on 3TB internal hard drives: Seagate's BlackArmor NAS server; Western Digital's Caviar Green; and now it's Hitachi's turn.

The company announced today its new lineup of 3TB storage solutions for both general users and OEMs. The first is the Hitachi Deskstar internal hard-drive kit, which is similar to that of WD's Caviar Green. The kit includes a 3TB Deskstar 7K3000 hard drive, mounting screws, step-by-step instructions, and software that allows 32- and 64-bit operating systems to take advantage of the full 3TB of storage.

The reason … Read more

Hitachi to ship high-speed 2TB hard drive

Hitachi joined the 2TB hard drive club Tuesday with the Deskstar 7K2000, an all-new hard drive it claims offers both capacity and performance for desktop computers.

While this is not the first 3.5-inch 2TB hard drive, it's indeed the first consumer hard drive that boasts the spinning speed of 7,200 rpm. Western Digital released its first 2TB hard drive back in April, the WD RE4-GP, which is a low-power and low-performance hard drive that doesn't have rpm specifications.

There are lots of factors that would affect a hard drive's performance. However generally, the higher rpm … Read more

Hitachi announces second-generation terabyte drive

Hitachi was first to hit the terabyte mark when it announced the 1TB Deskstar 7K1000 hard drive in January 2007. Fast forward a year and a half, and the company is back with not a larger version of the drive but a more efficient model in the Deskstar 7K1000.B. Like its predecessor, the 7K1000.B is a 3.5-inch, 7,200rpm hard drive that serves up 1TB of storage space and a 32MB buffer. It hits that magic terabyte mark, however, by using only three disks--down from the five-disk design of the older 1TB drive. It also borrows from … Read more