On Tuesday, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies introduced new Ultrastar drives designed for enterprise storage applications. The drives come in two sizes, 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch, both offering blazing spindle speeds of 15,000 RPM and self-encryption. According to the company, each Ultrastar drive conforms to the Trusted Computing Group’s Enterprise A Security Subsystem Class specification "for ease of integration and implementation."
The Ultrastar C15K147 is the company's first 15,000 RPM, 2.5-inch 6 Gb/sec. Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) hard drive, and boasts 70-percent more space efficiency compared to 3.5-inch enterprise hard rives. Hitachi said that the drive uses 50-percent less power than similar 3.5-inch Hitachi drives, and will be available in 73 GB and 147 GB capacities. The drive also uses the industry's largest cache buffer: a whopping 64 MB.
As for the 3.5-inch version, the 600 GB Ultrastar 15H600, this will be Hitachi's fourth generation 3.5-inch drive using either 6 Gb/sec. SAS or 4 Gb/sec. Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FCAL) interfaces, both of which use a 64 MB cache buffer. Outside the 600 GB model, consumers can also pick up a 300 GB or 450 GB version as well.
Hitachi said that the Ultrastar C15K147 and 15K600 drives are currently available, and include a five-year warranty.
These drives finally give customers an alternative 15K RPM drives that compete well with Seagate's Cheetah 15K7 drives released earlier this year.
