DailyTech - Hitachi Releases Trio of Enterprise Hard Drives

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Hardware Hitachi Releases Trio of Enterprise Hard Drives
Marcus Yam (Blog) - April 25, 2007 9:35 AM

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14 comment(s) - last by Vadriede.. on Apr 25 at 7:27 PM

Hitachi announces its first small form factor enterprise drive

This week, Hitachi announced a trio of new products: the 15K RPM Ultrastar 15K300, 7200 RPM Ultrastar A7K1000, and the company's first small form factor (SFF) enterprise hard drive, the 10K RPM Ultrastar C10K147.

The 15K300 is the next generation of the 15K147, which has been qualified at major enterprise storage OEMs. The A7K1000 represents the next generation of the Deskstar E7K500, popular for enterprise SATA applications. The Ultrastar C10K147 was developed specifically for the high performance, low power requirements of servers.

"The enterprise market segment is an extremely important business for Hitachi. Our customers are providing the critical storage infrastructure that supports end-users' ability to create, store and share digital content," said Shinjiro Iwata, chief marketing officer, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. "Our OEM customers have identified our products as setting the standard for quality, and building on this successful track record, our 2007 product portfolio helps position Hitachi to further expand our enterprise segment participation and achieve our volume-growth targets."

The Ultrastar 15K300 is available now, while the Ultrastar C10K147 and Ultrastar A7K1000 will be delivered in the second quarter of 2007.

Earlier this year, Hitachi announced its one terabyte drive – the Deskstar 7K1000 – with five platters at 7200 RPM and an average seek time of 8.7 milliseconds.

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Somewhat OT, but still curious:

By therealnickdanger on 4/25/2007 9:54:54 AM , Rating: 4

Why are HDD manufacturers locked in on speeds like 4200, 5400, 7200, 10K, and 15K? Why wouldn't WD or Seagate release a 6000RPM or 7700RPM drive to gain a slight performance edge in their respective classes?

I ask because I know nothing of the reasoning behind the speed categories. Do all HDD manufacturers buy the same internal parts or something? Do they only get certification from an international HDD panel if they choose one of those speeds?

RE: Somewhat OT, but still curious:

By retrospooty on 4/25/2007 10:16:41 AM , Rating: 2

Its just standard spindle motor speeds. Much like LCD's come in 17" 19" 20" 22" 24 and not 18"

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RE: Somewhat OT, but still curious:

By hecksign on 4/25/2007 11:29:17 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
Its just standard spindle motor speeds. Much like LCD's come in 17" 19" 20" 22" 24 and not 18"

and why does everybody follow the standard? Im also curious.

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RE: Somewhat OT, but still curious:

By techfuzz on 4/25/2007 11:42:31 AM , Rating: 2

They stick with the standard because it is cheaper for both the motor manufacturer and drive maker. Since everyone uses 7200, 10K, and 15K RPM drives it is very cheap for the motor manufacturers to mass produce batches of motors at these speeds. The motor manufacturers could run small production runs of 6600 and 7700 RPM motors, but they would charge the drive manufacturers many times more per batch.

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RE: Somewhat OT, but still curious:

By eckre on 4/25/2007 12:26:49 PM , Rating: 2

the question isn't "why" the question is "why not?"

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RE: Somewhat OT, but still curious:

By Lonyo on 4/25/2007 1:40:58 PM , Rating: 2

Minimal performance gains.
7700rpm vs 7200rpm isn't a huge difference, so you wouldn't see a huge boost in performance.
Spending more for a minor change in performance probably wouldn't bring in that much more money, especially when you consider there are other ways to improve performance without going against the "standards" i.e. more cache, different other technologies, higher platter densities.

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RE: Somewhat OT, but still curious:

By phaxmohdem on 4/25/2007 12:37:31 PM , Rating: 3

Just nitpicking here, but NEC did in fact release an 18 inch LCD display in the past.

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RE: Somewhat OT, but still curious:

By Omega215D on 4/25/2007 1:04:25 PM , Rating: 2

My aunt bought a Sony 18" LCD monitor for her PC so they can, do exist and there are some 20.xx" monitors as well as 21". Just some food for thought.

I would welcome any speed increase for HDDs either spindle or other technical goodness. Higher sustained throughput are the way to go not just burst speeds alone and have the durability for long term usage.

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RE: Somewhat OT, but still curious:

By lairdude on 4/25/2007 3:11:51 PM , Rating: 1

Speed is an issue - BURST is a better one - amount of RAM read-ahead is an even more important one - quality of the NorthGate chip to more the information effectively is an even better one (i.e. not installing the mainboard chipset drivers into windows for so windows knows how to do it makes all else much worse). Beyond all else -- no system is ever work faster than it's slowest part. Hope this helps.

from lairdude

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RE: Somewhat OT, but still curious:

By TomZ on 4/25/2007 4:31:06 PM , Rating: 2

The real question is, why hasn't anyone come out with a variable-speed drive yet? E.g., lower speeds when you want power savings (battery mode) and faster speeds when you want performance?

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RE: Somewhat OT, but still curious:

By Hare on 4/25/2007 5:19:14 PM , Rating: 2

I don't know but I've thought about that also.

I personally believe that power savings would be around a watt or two so it really doesn't make much difference. Technical difficulties might also be a reason. Maybe it's difficult to get the heads to properly hover at variable platter speeds?

Power savings would be minimal but what about wear?

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RE: Somewhat OT, but still curious:

By Vadriede on 4/25/2007 7:27:19 PM , Rating: 2

HDD producers make drives at these speeds because that is when the spinning disk resonance is at it's lowest points. This affects the signal to noise ratios, thus effects the amounts of data that can be put onto the disk in a given time interval. Much like signal to noise affects the speeds that a DSL circuit can support.

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