Wednesday, September 07, 2011

Hitachi announces 1TB-per platter drives

From ComputerWorld:

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Tuesday announced that it's started shipping hard disk drives that cram a terabyte of capacity onto a single spinning platter.
The new technology allows Hitachi to produce slimmer form factors.
The new single-platter technology is now shipping in the Hitachi Deskstar, Travelstar and CinemaStar lines with capacities ranging from 250GB to 1TB.
Utilizing the higher-capacity platters, Hitachi said it has produced new 3.5-in wide, .27-in (7mm) thick "z-height" drives targeted at everything from desk tops and TV set top boxes to ultra thin and light notebooks.
The new z-height drive
Hiatchi GST's new 'z-height' 1TB hard drive
For the ultra-thin and light notebook market, Hitachi's Travelstar Z5K500 drives offer up to 636Gbit/sq. in. on a platter that spins at 5200RPMs.
Hitachi's new Deskstar 7K1000.D 7200rpm and 5K1000.B 5200rpm drives, which utilize a 6Gbit/sec SATA interface and a 32MB cache buffer, are designed for commercial desktops, external storage arrays and PC gaming systems.
The new Deskstar line uses CoolSpin technology to save up to 15% power over standard drives by idling down the spindle. CoolSpin technology is an optimization of motor speed to provide a balance of performance, power utilization and acoustics.
Hitachi GST's CinemaStar 7K1000.D and 5K1000.B hard drives are aimed at the market for storage-based TVs and DVRs that record, playback, surf and stream content from and to devices.
Single-disk capacities ranging from 250GB to 500GB make up about 90% of disk drive demand for consumer electronics devices. Hitachi's new CinemaStar drive family now doubles that capacity for video content.
"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, in a statement.

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