The Deskstar brand is infamous among enthusiasts, and not just because it's a thinly-veiled attempt to tickle the Star Wars obsession that lives in the hearts of most geeks. First, there was the 75GXP failure fiasco, which fueled not only a class action lawsuit, but also our longest running comment thread. IBM eventually sold its hard drive business to Hitachi, which kept the Deskstar name intact despite the (probably undeserved) stigma associated with the name.

Under Hitachi's tutelage, the Deskstar again made headlines, this time as the first hard drive to hit the terabyte mark. This was quite an achievement at the time—Hitachi had to squeeze a whopping five platters into the drive to hit 1TB, and it took a while for the competition to catch up. But that was nearly two years ago, and time hasn't been kind to the first 3.5" terabyte. Areal densities have risen dramatically, allowing other drive makers to build terabyte drives with as few as three platters. Drives with fewer platters tend to be quieter and require less power, and with higher areal densities, they're quicker as well.

Not content to be left out, Hitachi has updated its Deskstar line with a new terabyte model primed for enterprise. With three 334GB platters, this fresh E7K1000 shouldeasily outclass the original. The real question, however, is how it fares against the latest terabyte drives from Western Digital, Seagate, and Samsung. Join us as we put the E7K1000 through its paces against the best the competition has to offer to find out.According to Hitachi, the Deskstar E7K1000 is designed for enterprise applications like nearline storage and RAID arrays. It's common for drive makers to spin out enterprise versions of their desktop products; Western Digital's RE3 is simply an enterprise version of the Caviar Black, for example, and Seagate's Barracuda ES.2 is to workstations and servers what the Barracuda 7200.11 is to desktops. The E7K1000 looks to be an enterprise version of Hitachi's Deskstar 7K1000.B desktop drive, with a few notable differences.

The first and perhaps most important of these differences—at least as far as the drive's target market is concerned—is the addition of Rotational Vibration Safeguard (RVS) tech that helps to maintain drive performance in high-vibration environments. Enterprise-class drives are often tightly packed in RAID arrays or rackmount enclosures where the close proximity of other drives creates a fair amount of vibration. These surrounding vibrations can easily knock a drive head off track, slowing performance. To combat this performance loss, RVS polls vibration sensors located at several points on the drive and adjusts the head position accordingly, resulting in more consistent performance in vibration-rich locales.

Intel and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies today announced plans to jointly develop and deliver Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and Fibre Channel (FC) enterprise-class solid-state drives (SSDs) for servers, workstations and storage systems.

The move marks a strategic shift for Hitachi, the world's third-largest hard drive maker, which until now has not made a commitment to SSD technology.

Hitachi GST is leading Enterprise drive supplier while Intel is a major manufacturer of NAND technology. The two companies said that they would work together exclusively to deliver enterprise SSDs with SAS and FC interfaces, with the first products expected to be available in early 2010.

The new generation of solid-state drive technology complements existing enterprise-class hard disk drives (HDDs) and is intended for use in storage applications that require extremely high Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) performance and power efficiency.

The new SSDs will be branded and exclusively sold and supported by Hitachi GST and use Intel NAND flash memory and SSD technology. The the first shipment planned for 2010, the companies said in a joint statement.Hitachi GST said that it would continue to provide its OEM customers with a portfolio of enterprise storage products that includes traditional HDDs and forthcoming SSDs. Intel will also continue to develop, market and sell its product lines of SATA SSDs.

Hitachi's SSD business would market the devices for business-use such as in servers and computer storage systems, and will not follow rivals like Toshiba in targeting laptop PCs and other consumer-based applications.

"The new solid-state drives for the enterprise include a number of architectural breakthroughs and improve performance and energy usage models that will change enterprise computing," said Randy Wilhelm, vice president and general manager, Intel NAND Solutions Group. "Intel and Hitachi GST share a common objective in delivering SAS/FC products based on solid-state technology that will help enterprise customers meet the skyrocketing demands for performance while reducing space, power and cooling costs."

"We understand the needs of today's enterprise customers and are committed to delivering breakthrough products that increase their data center performance and reduce total cost of ownership," said Shinjiro Iwata, executive vice president, Strategic Business Operations, Hitachi GST. "By expanding our product line-up to include both traditional enterprise hard drives and new SSDs, Hitachi GST will continue to provide customers with a proven set of products tailored to meet the high-performance, high-reliability requirements of today's data center."

Fujitsu Limited and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies have both announced today their latest 500GB 2.5" hard disk drive (HDD) products featuring low power consumption and built-in encryption functions.

Fujitsu MJA2 BH and MJA2 CH series

Fujitsu has developed two new 500 GB 2.5" hard disk drive (HDD) models that feature a rotational speed of 5,400 RPM. The MJA2 BH series will be available from the end of December 2008, and the MJA2 CH series will be available in the first quarter of the 2009 calendar year.

The new models consume only 1.4W of power when recording data, one-third less than previous models. Moreover, these are Fujitsu's first halogen-free HDD models, making them an environmentally friendly products across their lifecycle, from deployment to disposal.

In addition, the MJA2 CH series is equipped with 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption.

By increasing recording density, the new models deliver a maximum of 500 GB in storage capacity. To prevent data leaks for customers handling sensitive information, the MJA2 CH model has a built-in encryption function. This model automatically encrypts data as it is recorded, and all data stored on the HDD can be erased instantly, in less than a second, using the advanced secure erase feature.

Both MJA2 BH and MJA2 CH series target the expanding notebook PC market but also other markets such as desktop PCs.
Basic specifications:

Capacity: Maximum 500 GB
Interface SATA 3.0Gb/s (ATA-8, Serial ATA 2.6)
Rotation speed: 5,400 RPM
Average seek time (typ.): 12ms (read) 14 ms (write)
Data transfer rate: Max 300 MB/s
Buffer size: 8 MB
Shock resistance, during operation: 350 G (2 ms)
Shock resistance, non-operating: 900 G (1 ms)
Voltage: +5 V ± 5%

Power consumption
Read/write (typ.): 1.4 W (3.0 Gb/s) / 1.3 W (1.5 Gb/s)
Idle (typ.): 0.60 W (in slumber mode)
Standby (typ.): 0.13 W (in slumber mode)

Noise at idle (typ.): 2.4 bels
Dimensions: 9.5 x 70 x 100 mm
Weight: 101g or less

Hitachi Travelstar 5K500.B

Hitachi Hitachi GST introduced the Travelstar 5K500.B, a mobile hard drive that also combines advanced data encryption technology with eco-friendly features.
The Travelstar 5K500.B, Hitachi?s second 500GB mobile drive, uses the latest 250GB-per-platter technology to deliver a half terabyte (500GB) of capacity in a standard 9.5mm mobile form factor.

The Travelstar 5K500.B features optional Bulk Data Encryption (BDE) for hard-drive-level data security. The drive also meets the forthcoming Storage Security specification established by the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), an organization focused on developing open industry standards for security hardware and software. The TCG Storage Security specification, targeting consumer and commercial applications, is intended to discourage HDD/system theft, as well as prevent data access after HDD/system disposal.

BDE encrypts data using a private security key as it is written to the disk and then decrypts it with the key as it is retrieved. The TCG Storage Security specification implemented in the Travelstar 5K500.B supports pre-boot authentication in hardware, and up to four separate encrypted data ranges with multiple user and administrative authentication credentials. It also speeds and simplifies the drive re-deployment process. By deleting the encryption key, the data is rendered unreadable, thereby eliminating the need for time-consuming data-overwrite.

The Travelstar 5K500.B also features a read/write power specification of 1.4W, resulting in more energy-efficient notebooks that run cooler and have longer battery life.

Hitachi has just announced its Ultrastar 15K450 hard-disk drive that packs 450 GB of storage space using perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology. It's true that such capacities are no longer new, since other
companies ship 1 TB disk drives, but Hitachi's 450 GB offering spins at 15,000 rotations per minute and is the largest drive on the enterprise-class market.

The Ultrastar 15K450 is especially tailored to perform in mission-critical server and storage applications, including intensive database environments and online transaction processing. The drive is built on state-of-the-art mechanical technologies, such as fluid dynamic bearing motors, in order to keep the noise levels at a minimum, as well as Hitachi's patented head load/unload ramp that protects the data integrity.

The built-in Rotational Vibration Safeguard (RVS) technology tries to predict the disturbances that usually occur while mounted into a multi-drive setup and automatically corrects the errors produced by mini-shocks of vibrations, in order to preserve data accuracy and safety."With the higher capacity and performance of the Ultrastar 15K450, enterprises are able to address their throughput requirements using fewer drives, which reduces three things; the cost of ownership, the datacenter's footprint and overall power requirements," said Dean Amini, director, Enterprise Market & Strategy, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

According to the company, the internal tests unveiled 30 percent improvements in sequential throughput over the company's previous enterprise-class offerings. The drive is extremely fast and sports average seek times of about 3.3 milliseconds, with average latencies of 2 milliseconds due to its increased rotational speed.

"Coupled with our intensive testing and quality assurance process, the Ultrastar 15K450 offers the highest available performance and reliability for mission-critical computing environments," Amini continued.

The company also claimed that the drive will be available in both 3Gb/s Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and 4Gb/s Fibre Channel (FC) interfaces, for maximum compatibility and data troughput in a server environment.