14 DAY TRIAL // Hitachi Global Storage Technologies is still in the game, as evident from a certain new hard drive unit that has shown its face on the Japanese market.
The new Hitachi HDD, dubbed Deskstar 7K4000 HDS724040ALE640, is a rather curious piece of work, though clearly intended for enthusiasts.
Rather than relying on the latest and most dense platters available, the storage unit utilizes previous-generation 800GB disks.
That means that the areal density of each platter is 446Gb/square inch and that a total of five disks are available, not four.
The choice is curious, as 1TB platters have existed for quite some time.
Speculations suggest that the reason behind the company's decision not to go with the latest platters was concern for reliability.
Moving on, in addition to 4TB of storage space, the drive relies on the SATA 6.0 Gbps interface (SATA III) and comes with a cache memory of 64MB.
Japanese retailers and/or stores should have it up for ¥28800, roughly the same as $377 / 286 Euro.
Finally, the spindle speed of all five magnetic disks is 7,200 RPM (rotations per minute).
In addition to the Deskstar 7K4000 HDS724040ALE640, Hitachi has also prepared a Deskstar 5K4000 drive with 5400rpm speed.
Like its faster sibling, it utilizes five 800 GB platters rather than 1TB disks.
The so-called “concerns” that sparked the need for these product releases were left rather vague, and we haven't heard about any product recalls or great bouts of outrage from customers either. Best case scenario, the worries turn out to be unwarranted.
The price of the Deskstar 5K4000 was not revealed, but it cannot be much lower than the one mentioned above.
Hopefully, as HDDs in general become more affordable, so will these. After all, even enthusiasts start to wonder about the viability of a price after a certain point, and supply shortage can justify only so much.