Hitachi Aims Low-power Hard Drives At Consumer Electronics

San Jose (CA) - We have been hearing a lot lately about low-power hard drives and Hitachi GST is only the latest company to continue the trend. However, the company does not pitch its new CinemaStar hard drives as "green" hard drives, but as hard drives for consumer electronics devices.

Low power is good for your electricity bill but, at least in this case, it is even better for noise levels. Thanks to a low-power motor design, which requires less power to spin up the drive, Hitachi said that consumer electronics (CE) may allow the use of more efficient power supplies. Less power also means less heat and potentially less or even no fans in a CE device such as a digital video recorder.

Hitachi will be offering two form factors of the drive - in 2.5" and 3.5". The CinemaStar 5K500 comes with 500 GB capacity and an idle power consumption of 2.7 - 3.2 watts, which is about half of what average 3.5" hard drives are consuming today. The company did not provide power consumption levels during read/write processes.

The 2.5" model comes with capacities ranging from 120 GB to 320 GB 0.55 watt idle power and 1.8 watt of power consumption during read and write operations, which is about 10-20% below the levels of average 2.5" drives.

Hitachi claims that both drives are "bedroom-quiet".

The CinemaStar 5K500 and C5K320 are both expected to be shipping worldwide in June 2008.