San Jose (CA) – Hitachi renovated its 3.5” hard drive family and now offers the second-generation 1 TB 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” drives at 2.5” 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” vendors: Instead of five 200 GB disks, the new drive has three 333 GB disks. Hitachi representatives told TG Daily 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.

What makes the new 7200 rpm drive interesting is not its performance or capacity (which theoretically could hit 1.6 TB in 5-disk models), but its power consumption.

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 That is close to 2.5” 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 than what we paid last year. Hitachi said that the 7K1000.B is 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.

Hitachi also offers an enterprise version of the 7K1000.B. For an extra $40, the E7K1000 comes with a larger (32 MB) buffer a higher reliability rating 1.2 million hour MTBF (there is no MTBF rating on the 7K1000.B) as well as a 5-year warranty instead of the 3-year warranty on the 7K1000.B.

Why can't the spin rate be adjusted by the user?

Jul 09, 2008 16:11     

I think it would be great if we were able to manually select a different spin rate to save power. 7200, 5400 or 4200 would be great to have. Why would someone want slower access?? Well, if you have 8 of these on a RAID5/6 on a server and you access the data via a puny GB enet card ... you never will see a difference. Keeping the server cool and quiet (and a lower utility bill) would be well worth like 1-2 ms access time...

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From 5 * 200GB to 3 * 333GB?

Jul 09, 2008 17:19     

Does that mean that 5 * 333GB (1.66TB) drives are just around the corner?
Ian report abuse vote down vote up Votes: +0

Im just curious

Jul 09, 2008 17:49     

As to Hitachi's Marketing team.... why did they put a low flying jet liner in the background picture? Not funny Hitachi! The bush Administration has flown enough planes into buildings.
R report abuse vote down vote up Votes: -4

@R

Jul 10, 2008 08:23     

lol, Nice poke at Bush.
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1 TB? No way for me to put my all files on it. Wast...

Jul 10, 2008 14:36     

1 TB? No way for me to put my all files on it. Waste my time! :-( You will easily lost your important files from 1 TB. Don't forget backup your files on CD/DVD/Blu-Ray disc and can live longest than Hard Drive life cycle. My favorite max GB for me to use 100 GB to 500 GB. 500 GB(Max) is enough for me. I hate Seagate. I love Western Digital so much and WD is more strongest than Seagate. Maxtor is ok, but I touch my Maxtor USB Hard drive is little hotter than Western Digital. Go to Western Digital all way. Western Digital(WD) is world's best hard drive and our favorite color is blue. Blue can lead into the future. Blue = Very Good - Powerful than all other colors. Seagate = Yellow(mean short life cycle and you will lost files easily) Yellow = Caution. My old WD hard drive 20 GB born in Dec. 1999 and dead at Oct. 11, 2005. Live longer WD hard drive! :-) My old Maxtor USB Hard drive still live from 2003 to now(2008). I don't use backup hard drive much. Save hard drive life longer. I have two WD 500 GB each. No hotter appear. Cool and right way to use them. Because WD MyBook have build in air breath to keep cool air to push warm air out. Why replace your hard drive again, again many times? We will move to Solid State Disk(SSD) soon, because SSD have longer life cycle. SSD life is about 20 times of per hard drive. What you think about SSD? Do our homework for study both SSD and HDD life cycle.

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Reply to " Why can't the spin rate be adjusted by the user?"

Jul 10, 2008 15:00     

The motor that spins the spindle is designed to spin at some predefined speed, i.e 5400 or 7200 RPM etc. The life of the motor will take a hit, if its run at a speed other than the speed its designed for. I believe it has to do with the fluid bearings of the motor.
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