14 DAY TRIAL // The IFA 2011 show had drawn to a lose, but product announcements are, as usual, going strong, with Hitachi being, this once, the one to enter the spotlight and release new inventions, HDDs to be more exact.
Some people may remember that, back in May, Seagate became the first company to offer hard disk drive storage units created with platters of 1 TB.
Hitachi is now following up with its own such inventions, bearing both the Deskstar and CinemaStar brands.
The devices in question are the 7K1000.D and 5K1000.B series, the monikers hinting at their platter speeds (7,200 and 5,400 rotations per minute).
The fact that 1 TB platters are at last part of Hitachi's portfolio is the main news here, but the newcomers still cover other capacity ranges, down to as low as 250 GB.
The SATA 6.0 Gbps interface was utilized, paired with 32MB of buffer memory and a high power efficiency.
To be more specific, the 7K1000.D are said to consume up to 15% less power while idle (compared to predecessors), while the 5K1000.D, compared to the 7K1000.D, runs on an extra 23% less.
“The areal density race continues and while having the highest capacity is appealing, reaching 1TB per platter is equally important as it serves a full range of applications and opportunities across the industry’s largest market volume,” said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing at Hitachi GST.
“As we ship our first 1TB per platter drives, we know we’re delivering capacity, reliability and value to a broad customer base. Not only are we shipping our 1TB per platter drives to our own Branded Business, but we are shipping to our channel partners as well, enabling them to design affordable HDD-based solutions at attractive price points.”
The Deskstar models should already be shipping to distributors, but their prices were not mentioned. As for the CinemaStar ones (optimized for A/V streaming), they will come later this fall.