Less than a month ago, Hitachi announced its 2TB hard drive for desktops. The company on Tuesday brought the same speed to its newest Travelstar hard drive for laptops.
The new hard drive is called Travelstar 7K500. This is a 500GB, 2.5-inch, SATA 2 (3Gb/s) hard drive designed for high-performance notebooks and external storage solutions. The new Travelstar 7K500, according to Hitachi, delivers up to 56 percent higher capacity and 16 percent better application performance than its predecessors. It also comes with Hitachi's new technologies designed to withstand shocks and vibration, and offers better power management and security.
The new 7200 RPM TravelStar hard drive.
(Credit: Hitachi)As with previous generations of the Travelstar hard drive, like the Travelstar 5K500.B, the Travelstar 7K500 comes optional with hardware-based bulk data encryption (BDE). However, it's one of the first that's compliant with the Trusted Computing Group's (TCG) Opal storage security specification. This is a new open standard designed to protect data in the event of system loss or theft.
(Hitachi BDE, much like the Seagate's full disk encrytion, is a hardware-based encryption provided as an option for hard drives. Once enabled, the hard drive will encrypt all data that comes from the system as it is written to the media. When read back, the drive decrypts the data so that it can be understood by the system. Since the hard drive is doing the encryption work, there is no impact on the operating system's performance. In case of loss or theft, the data can be automatically deleted, rendering the hard drive unreadable.)
Hitachi claims that the new Travelstar 7K500 has been designed for energy efficiency with power consumption as low as 0.69 watts when idle and 1.8 watts during operation. The drive also offer halogen-free design and RoHS compliance.
The new Travelstar 7K500 comes in 120GB, 160GB, 250GB, 320GB, and 500GB capacities. It's currently only available to OEMs but you can get your own sometime later this month with the 500GB version costing $160.
(Credit:
Daniel Terdiman/CNET)
It's funny how the Japanese love to waste their supercomputers on climate change and car design instead of nuclear weapons like in some countries.
Now they're squandering their teraflops chasing down irrational numbers.
The T2K-Tsukuba System, a supercomputer at the University of Tsukuba northeast of Tokyo, has calculated the value of pi to more than 2.5 trillion decimal places, a record. The old record of more than 1.2 trillion decimal places was set in 2002 by a team from the University of Tokyo and Hitachi.
The new value of pi is 2,576,980,370,000 decimal places long, the result of a computation on T2K-Tsukuba in April of this year that took 73 hours and 36 minutes. The time included verification.
The T2K-Tsukuba consists of 640 nodes with peak calculation of 95.4 trillion floating point operations per second.
"If there is an error in any part, the calculation would be impossible," associate professor Daisuke Takahashi of the Center for Computational Sciences was quoted as saying by the Yomiuri newspaper. "I think the result shows the high reliability of the system."
Takahashi, who wrote the two programs that performed the calculation, applied to Guinness World Records earlier this month with the new value.
He noted some intriguing numerical sequences in the result, including 012345678901, 987654321098, 8888888888888, and even 3141592653589.
As I've written elsewhere, Japan has been losing the supercomputer race for some time now, so I think further pi brinkmanship among Japanese labs is unlikely. But you never know. There may be a computer in Kyoto or Osaka cooking up a 10 trillion-digit pi.
The populace would sure eat it up. Back in 2005, 59-year-old Akira Haraguchi recited pi to an astonishing 83,431 decimal places.
Haraguchi wasn't crazy. His job? Mental health counselor.
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.
(Credit:
Hitachi)
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 number translates to higher performance.
The new Deskstar 7K2000 features Hitachi's five-platter design with relaxed bit density and perpendicular magnetic recording technology. It has a 32MB cache and supports the SATA2 interface. Hitachi claims that apart from the performance, the new drive is also designed to be eco-friendly, being halogen-free and compliant with the RoHS standard.
In addition to the new 2TB Deskstar 7K2000, Hitachi offers the new 7,200 rpm Deskstar 7K1000.C family that comes in capacities from 160GB to 1TB.
These two new hard drives are available now, with the 2TB Deskstar 7K2000 costing $329.
Hitachi SimpleDRIVE Mini Family
(Credit: Hitachi)I had a chance on Friday to chat with reps from Hitachi, who told me about some new products in conjunction with the SimpleTech acquisition earlier this year. We've reviewed SimpleTech hard drives in the past, with positive results, so we're anxious to see how these two new drives compare to their predecessors.
Hitachi SimpleTOUGH HDD
(Credit: Hitachi)Up to bat first is the SimpleTOUGH portable hard drive, a tough guy that claims to be one of the most rugged drives for an excessively abusive environment. The Hitachi reps claimed the drive can withstand a 10-foot drop, more than 5 feet more than the Iomega eGo Camo that boasted a 4.25-inch drop protection.
They also told me someone at Hitachi actually ran over one of the drives with a 1-ton commercial-class truck that belonged to one of their neighbors, and it lived to write another day! I'm sure Hitachi doesn't recommend running over the SimpleTOUGH yourself, but it sure as heck should be able to withstand the daily rigors of the average consumer.
It also has a built-in USB cord in its all-in-one design. Pricing for the SimpleTOUGH starts at $99 for the 250GB version, $120 for the 320GB, and $150 for to the 500GB. All drives are shipping now.
If you don't want to pay the slight premium for the SimpleTOUGH, Hitachi's got your back with the SimpleDRIVE Mini Portable, a more stylish and stripped down version of the SimpleTOUGH. It comes in multiple colors and offers local as well as online backup (2GB free for life on Mozy).
The SimpleDRIVE is available now in 250GB (red) for $90, 320GB (blue) for $110, and 500GB (textured carbon fiber) for $140. Click through the slideshow below for more images of both offerings.
I was fortunate enough to be in the audience when Steve Jobs wowed the world with his demonstration of the iPhone a couple of years ago. As he was showing off multitouch technology, I remember turning to my friend and saying something along the lines of, "Gesture control like this is going to change everything." I remember it being a touchstone moment.
Monday's announcement of gesture control for the Xbox 360 marks another advance for the technology, but there are some ideas that could come to market quickly as well.
The below video shows Canesta's new 3D gesture control system, which it's hoping to sell soon with help from Hitachi and GestureTek. The idea is to build the sensors into media devices such as game consoles or Apple TV-like gear to give your remote control a rest.
It's a pretty cool idea, and according to the accompanying press release, it should be a low-cost product. We're not sure when--if ever--this will make its way into living rooms, but the know-how is there. If this Cinesta video and Microsoft's E3 announcements prove anything it's that the technology is ready, too.
Personally, I'm completely happy with my USB keyboard and optical mouse. But if you're a fan of alternative input devices, such as the PaperShow, you now have another choice.
Hitachi Software announced Tuesday its new StarBoard WT-1 interactive wireless tablet. Basically, it's a mouse and keyboard replacement that lets presenters in educational facilities and corporate environments interact with their audiences.
(Credit:
Hitachi)
The device has a range up to 30 feet thanks to RF wireless technology, and a battery life of up to 16 hours of continuous use. This seems nice as the PaperShow offer only a few hours of continuous usage, possibly because it uses Bluetooth.
Other than offering regular functionality as a input device, the WT-1 also includes 16 shortcut function keys, handwriting recognition, search engine integration, and a small built-in LCD indicator screen. It comes with an interactive pen with two programmable buttons that you can use to, for example, move back and forth between slides.
However, the feature I find most unique is that you can use up to seven WT-1 units to a PC. This makes the device well-suited for presentations hosted by a group of people.
The StarBoard WT-1 weighs around a pound and measures 10.9 inches by 11.1 inches by 0.8 inches with a writing resolution of 2000 lpi. It will be available sometime next month. Right now it's unclear how much it costs.
During this week of everything green and earth friendly, we choose to shine a light (preferably compact fluorescent) on the ridiculous side of green gadgetry.
Listen now: Download today's podcast
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EPISODE 134 |
Solar bra brings conservation closer to the heart
Squirrel light an eco-friendly form of rodent worship
Laser-etched laptop tray made from recyclable materials
Hitachi’s ‘green’ refrigerator turns out blue
Trivia: We spill a lot of gas on our lawnmowers
Pleo (robotic dinosaur) now extinct
... Read more
(Credit:
KitchAnn Style)
Going "green" is a huge movement, with companies around the world releasing products that have less and less of an environmental impact--or, at least, that's what they want us to believe. As consumers' interest in eco-friendly products gets higher, so does the temptation to embellish a product's green credentials.
According to The Mainichi Daily News, Hitachi Appliances, a subsidiary of Hitachi and currently Japan's biggest refrigerator maker, seems to be the first company to have fallen for the temptation to claim a product is green when it isn't.
Of nine refrigerator models the company released between September and November of last year, including the "Eiyo Ikiiki Shinku Chirudo V" and the "Big & Slim 60", six are not eco-friendly at all and the other three are far from the level of eco-friendliness the company advertised them to be.
... Read moreThough the new 6Gbps SATA standard that Seagate demonstrated awhile ago hasn't been available in any products yet, if you want to get that speed now, there's another option. But only enterprise customers need apply.
(Credit:
Hitachi)
Hitachi introduced on Tuesday its second-generation of the 10,000rpm Ultrastar hard drive, the C10K300. The new drive uses a dual-port attached SCSI (SAS) interface that offers data rates up to 6GBps (or about 300MBps), about twice the speed of the previous model. It has average seek times as low as 3.9 milliseconds.
The 2.5-inch drive has a low-power-consumption design with Hitachi's Advanced Power Management that lets the drive deliver an idle power specification of 3.4 watts and 6.1 watts in active operating mode. These specifications are lower than most drives in its class.
The Ultrastar C10K300 also uses halogen-reduced components to support the green computing initiatives getting popular in data centers nowadays. The drive features Hitachi EcoTrac classification, meaning it belongs in a category of products that minimize environmental impact in the areas of product design, manufacturing, operation, and disposal.
The new 10,000rpm Ultrastar C10K300 is available now in 147GB and 300GB capacities. Their cost has not yet been disclosed.
Fabrik's (re)drive, the first external drive made partially of bamboo.
(Credit: Fabrik)When I reviewed Fabrik's SimpleTech Signature Mini and SimpleTech (re)drive external hard drives a while ago, I liked its tasteful designs. As it turns out, my taste wasn't so peculiar.
Hitachi on Monday announced its decision to acquire Fabrik, a privately held supplier of personal and professional storage solutions.
If you haven't heard of Fabrik, this is because it has been selling external storage under two better-known brands: G-Technology and SimpleTech. CNET has reviewed several products launched under each brand.
Although the financial details of the transaction were not disclosed, Hitachi made it clear that Fabrik's business will remain intact and form the core of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies' new external-storage business.
Going forward, you will still find Fabrik external storage in both G-Technology and SimpleTech brands. The combined company plans to offer external-storage solutions based on both regular hard drives and solid-state drives.
The acquisition seems a natural move for Hitachi. For the Japanese company, it means an expansion into a market for external-storage hardware currently dominated by Seagate and Western Digital. For California-based Fabrik, it means broadening its market horizons, though it probably also means limiting the internal hard drives for its external storage solution to those of Hitachi.
