Hitachi's New HDDs A Blazing 15,000 RPM Fast

By Kevin Parrish
published

Hitachi's two new Ultrastar drives have blazing spindle speeds of 15,000 RPM.

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.

Kevin Parrish
19 Comments Comment from the forums
  • frontliner
    The amount of cache doesn't matter much since it depends on the effeciency of the firmware, plus since you're behind a full fledged RAID card that further negates the cache. Plus nice PR report, how much are they paying for these?
    Reply
  • yang
    I care more about the price at this point. If it's significantly more and cost almost like an SSD drive. i would probably just buy a ssd instead. Then again, this has 600gb...
    Reply
  • michaelahess
    I've been running 3.5" Hitachi 15k drives for years, other than the 2.5" drives being 15k this isn't news.
    Reply
  • pirateboy
    the thing probably sounds like a dentist drill
    Reply
  • mapesdhs
    Newer 15Ks can be a lot faster than earlier models. If you're
    using a HUS151414VL3600 or HUS151473VL3800 for example (146GB/15K
    and 73GB/15K Hitachi drives respectively), then newer models could
    be twice as fast. I've tested a wide range of drives and there is
    huge variance. See:

    http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/diskdata.html

    The advantages of modern production methods are very evident
    with the WD VR 10K beating every 10K SCSI disk for both tests,
    and most of the 15Ks aswell. I've not yet been able to test any
    newer SCSI/FC/SAS disks though.

    My PC has Maxtor 146GB 15Ks (1 internal, 12 external) plus a 1TB
    SATA (video archive), while all my SGIs have the same Maxtor 15Ks
    except for my main Fuel desktop - the system I'm typing this on -
    which has a Fujitsu 300GB 15K MBA3300NC (system disk), Fujitsu
    300GB 10K MAT3300NP (data) and a 1TB SATA (backup of the PC's
    1TB). The nice part about 15K SCSI is it's very cheap 2nd-hand.

    Noise levels of 15Ks vary enormously. Old 18GB 15Ks can be very
    loud, but other 15Ks are nice and quiet, eg. the MAS3367NC,
    ST336754LC and BF03685A35.

    Hitachi's new drives, using modern tech, are probably quite good
    aswell wrt noise levels, if the WD VR 10K is anything to go by.

    Ian.

    Reply
  • pocketdrummer
    If they could put the 2.5" one in a 3.5" enclosure to get the noise down to acceptable levels, and if it didn't cost me my house.... then I would jump at the chance of using a pair of these as my Audio Drive for recording. I'll never have to worry about dropouts again!
    Reply
  • xeysz
    I refuse to do business with Hitachi. I had a 500 GB Hitachi internal and it died shortly after a year of (infrequent) use. This would be acceptable if it was a 500 GB external HDD that I used every day and was being carried around susceptible to shocks etc. (my brother had a 500 GB WD fail as well), but there was no explanation for the Hitachi to die prematurely like that.

    I then replaced it with Seagate's new 7200.12 749GB internal HDD which has been working great for me with no problems at all. My old Hitachi used to make noises sometimes when I turned my computer on or when I was installing programs but this one is silent. And it's amazing that the new Seagate cost me just $70.


    I agree with the others, in around three years SSDs will become much more affordable. I can see in the future all operating systems being installed on SSDs and HDDs only being used as secondary drives. But as it currently is, where you can get a 750GB HDD for $70, there's just no reason to spend hundreds of dollars on a 15K RPM HDD or 60-120 GB flash drive.
    Reply
  • amdgamer666
    Damn I read the headline and was hoping that they were desktop drives. I know it was a long shot but 15k rpm desktop drives might be enticing enough to stay with hdd's for a little longer intead of getting a ssd. I think somebody should make one though, it'd put a velociraptor to shame. But for the right price, I think there'd be a market for them until ssd drives get to a more mainstream price for the capacities offered.
    Reply
  • liquidsnake718
    these should already be bigger than 184GB of storage capacity by now.
    Reply
  • wildwell
    YangI care more about the price at this point. If it's significantly more and cost almost like an SSD drive. i would probably just buy a ssd instead. Then again, this has 600gb...
    I don't think there are any E-class SSDs yet, and this thing will write a lot faster. For personal use though, I think my laptop's getting an SSD.
    Reply