Hitachi makes new eco-friendly hard drive
Hitachi on Wednesday joined the crowd of green-storage vendors with its fourth generation of the CinemaStar hard-drive family.
The new CinemaStar hard drive.
(Credit: Hitachi)The new drive features Hitachi's EcoTrac Classification. This means it's halogen-free and has very low power consumption. The new CinemaStar features a read/write power specification of 1.4W--a reduction of 22 percent compared to previous models.
Other that that, this is a 2.5-inch (laptop) SATA hard drive that has the spinning speed of 5,400 rpm, which is popular though slower than the 7,200 rpm of some higher-end drives.
According to Hitachi, its new CinemaStar hard drive is best suited for digital video applications that require compact design and low power usage, such as slim digital video recorders, set-top boxes, and surveillance systems.
This is because the new CinemaStar supports Hitachi's SmoothStream technology that enhances streaming functionality in digital video application and is designed for ultraquiet operation.
The new CinemaStar drive will be available in capacities ranging between 160GB and 500GB and is expected to ship during the second quarter of the year. For now, it's unclear how much the drive will cost.
Dong Ngo is a CNET editor who covers networking and network storage, and writes about anything else he finds interesting. You can also listen to his podcast at insidecnetlabs.cnet.com. E-mail Dong. 
