Hitachi Fires Up Second-generation Terabyte Hard Drives

San Jose (CA) - Hitachi updated its 3.5 inch hard drive family and now offers the second-generation 1TB drive, which does not offer more capacity or speed, but comes with effective power saving features that may allow storage farms to run these 3.5 inch drives at 2.5 inch power consumption rates.

On the surface, there is not much new about Hitachi’s new 3.5" 7K1000.B drive. In fact, the main difference to spot right away is the fact that the storage density has been increased substantially and Hitachi GST has joined the leading 3.5 inch vendors: Instead of five 200 GB disks, the new drive has three 333 GB disks. Hitachi representatives told us that the 5-disk model will continue to be available through 2009, but the 3-disk version will ramp quickly and replace the old drives.

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Compared to the 8.4 watts the first-gen drive consumed in idle-mode, the B-model checks in at only 5.2 watts. And if power consumption is the primary concern of the user (such as data storage facilities), the drive supports a "reduced power idle state": The disk rotation speed can be dropped via HDD commands to less than 5000 rpm, which will take the idle power consumption down to 2.4 watts which is close to 2.5 inch territory (about 2 - 2.2 watts) and could make these drives an interesting option for any environment that does not depend on maximum data transfer rates.

The price of the terabyte drive is substantially lower as well than what we paid last year. Hitachi said that the 7K1000.B is now offered at $239.99 MSRP, which means that you should expect street prices not too far away from the $200 mark. The price is about in line with the competition: Samsung’s 1 TB drive, for example, is currently sold in a price range of $159 to $265, according to Pricegrabber.com.

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Wolfgang Gruener is an experienced professional in digital strategy and content, specializing in web strategy, content architecture, user experience, and applying AI in content operations within the insurtech industry. His previous roles include Director, Digital Strategy and Content Experience at American Eagle, Managing Editor at TG Daily, and contributing to publications like Tom's Guide and Tom's Hardware.

7 Comments Comment from the forums

Lozil

Looks good... Going for an upgrade as soon as my Hard drive space tells me your running low...

http://free-and-useful.blogspot.com
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So, 1.2 million hour MTBF (= 136.9 years) with only 5-year warranty....
Why not give it a lifetime warranty if they are sooo reliable?
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dragunover

Because people are more likely to fail their motherboard,power supply,or screw it up themselves first
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Pei-chen

anonymous99So, 1.2 million hour MTBF (= 136.9 years) with only 5-year warranty....Why not give it a lifetime warranty if they are sooo reliable?Bookkeeping reason I'd assume. Imaging how it would look if you have a 100 year old liability.
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blackened144

They said at the top of the article that there was no performence increase but in the middle they say that the disk density increased from 200G/platter to 333G/platter. If the platters are still spinning at 7200rpm, how does that not give a performence increase? Is there something Im missing?
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beerzombie

I was wondering the same thing, blackened144. I'm curious if these perform as well as the samsungs, and how the power savings factors into that. If I can get the same performance, and consume less power (and generate less heat/noise) I'd easily opt for these at a slightly higher price (especially w/ the enterprise 5yr warranty/larger buffer option)

I guess we'll have to wait till they're officially reviewed (as this seems like just a press release rehashed)
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storageinventor

Although the density for each platter has increased, the number of platters has decreased. This means that the number of data blocks per cylinder is roughly equivalent.
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