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Hardware Hitachi Unveils 2007 Mobile Hard Disk Plans
Anh Tuan Huynh (Blog) - November 1, 2006 2:24 AM

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10 comment(s) - last by JeffDM.. on Nov 5 at 11:05 PM

Quarter-terabyte, hybrid and data encrypted drives

Hitachi Global Storage Solutions today unveiled its mobile 2.5” hard drive plans for 2007. For 2007 HGST plans to increase hard drive capacities past 200GB using perpendicular magnetic recording technology. HGST is expected to release a 200GB 2.5” notebook drive in the 1H’2007. The drive is expected to spin at 7200RPM and offer high performance. Moving into the second half of 2007 will be a second HGST Travelstar product release. The second Travelstar product for 2007 will be available up to 250GB and spin at 5400RPM.

These new HGST drives will also be available in hybrid configurations with flash memory as well. HGST claims:

With the decreasing cost of flash, Hitachi believes there is greater opportunity to increase the value of hard drives by storing some system functions to flash memory rather than on the disk.

The integration of flash memory on notebook hard drives is expected to increase battery life, speed up boot-up, hibernation recovery times, and improve reliability. Data encryption models will also be available. Models with data encryption technology will allow users to secure drives in hardware rather than software. HGST claims:

Hitachi’s version of hard-drive-level data encryption scrambles data using a password-generated key as it is being written to the disk and then descrambled with the key as it is retrieved.

Data encryption technology will be available on hybrid drives as well. On flash memory equipped hybrid drives, data will be encrypted on both the disc and flash memory areas of the hard drive. HGST drives use the AES encryption algorithm for the highest level of security. Expect to see Travelstar 200GB, 250GB, hybrid and data encrypted drives in 2007.

HGST isn’t the only company at work with hybrid and data encrypted notebook hard drives. Seagate previously announced its second generation line of fully encrypted Momentus FDE.2 family of notebook hard drives. Seagate also released its first generation data encrypted hard drives last July too, though details were unveiled months before. Perpendicular magnetic recording technology is also used by Seagate on its desktop and notebook products as well.

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Not a bad idea..

By freon on 11/1/2006 3:30:11 PM , Rating: 1

I am interested to see how the hybrid drives perform. I dont get too caught up in battery life, but the speed increases whould be decent.

Oh, and "Quarter-terrabyte"? Come on now.. Lets not try to make the common 250GB drive sound so glamorous. :)

RE: Not a bad idea..

By freon on 11/1/2006 3:31:34 PM , Rating: 2

whould? I think I meant should, but it could be would.

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RE: Not a bad idea..

By feelingshorter on 11/1/2006 5:03:43 PM , Rating: 3

They are talking about notebook hard drives. 250 is huge, for a notebook although common for regular PC. Hybrid drives should increase battery life. They already have laptops in Japan using the 32gig Samsung solid state storage drive. Great stuff but expensive. Hybrid is the way to go.

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RE: Not a bad idea..

By JeffDM on 11/1/2006 9:41:06 PM , Rating: 2

I really doubt the claims that the difference in battery life is significant. For a current notebook, the hard drive is about 5% of a notebook's power consumption. As it is, if you completely took out the power consumption of the hard drive in a notebook that runs for 2 1/2 hours on batteries, you might extend battery life by nine minutes.

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RE: Not a bad idea..

By PlasmaBomb on 11/2/2006 5:32:22 PM , Rating: 2

A typical notebook consumes 3W when under load, which isn't that much. Might make a difference in the ultra portable market.

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Hibernating

By NordicNINE on 11/1/2006 8:25:00 PM , Rating: 2

Since the memory on them is flash memory, it'll hold memory with power off, correct?
So, hibernation & resume from hibernation should be near instant.
That would be cool.

RE: Hibernating

By JeffDM on 11/5/2006 11:05:28 PM , Rating: 2

Bit flash memory isn't that much faster than hard drives. For example, the fastest CF card is equivalent to 80x CD-ROM drive, which is 12MB per second. It's a far cry from that of RAM.

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Subject

By Howard on 11/1/2006 5:11:57 PM , Rating: 2

Terabyte, not terrabyte

RE: Subject

By Suomynona on 11/1/2006 5:20:26 PM , Rating: 1

I know, we declared war on terrabytes a few years ago.

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Nice increase

By timmiser on 11/2/2006 2:03:23 PM , Rating: 2

This will be a nice increase by doubling from 100 to 200 GB the largest notebook drive in the 7200 rpm segemnt. We were at 60 GB for so long and then finally got upped to 100 GB but to double in 1 year's time is a significant increase when you compare how the technology had been progressing prior to this.

"Intel is investing heavily (think gazillions of dollars and bazillions of engineering man hours) in resources to create an Intel host controllers spec in order to speed time to market of the USB 3.0 technology." -- Intel blogger Nick Knupffer