[NEWZ]: Hitachi 7K500, T7K250 Models Announced

[Corvair]

Half Terabyte Hitachi Hard Drive Tops Trio of Performance Products with Server-Class Data Rates

Company Doubles Existing Data Rate with First 3.0 Gb/s SATA II Interface

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Jan. 5, 2005 – Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) today announced an expanded product line that will take on the 3.5-inch ATA hard drive segment with a three-prong, performance-focused approach. Hitachi is adding three new 7,200 RPM drives to its family of Deskstar products, targeting the broadest range of 3.5-inch consumer and commercial applications: mainstream PCs and workstations, digital video recorders (DVRs), nearline storage and other enterprise ATA applications.

The Hitachi drives being unveiled today include the industry’s first half terabyte (500 GB) Serial ATA (SATA) drive for audio/video and other capacity-intensive applications – the Deskstar 7K500. In the mid-range category, Hitachi offers the Deskstar T7K250, a two-disk, 250 GB product, while the Deskstar 7K80 rounds out the portfolio with an 80 GB offering, targeting the most popular capacity point. From industry-leading capacity to best-of-breed performance, Hitachi is also the first hard drive vendor to deliver all of the major design enhancements identified in the SATA II specification, including a 3 Gb/s data transfer rate increase across all three of the new drives. The new transfer rate represents a doubling of the previous SATA 1.0 rate and rivals that of enterprise-class SCSI drives.

The new Deskstar drives all feature a single-chip, native SATA chipset and Native Command Queuing (NCQ), which enables fast data transfer rates for enterprise ATA and other performance-based applications. NCQ is a method of controlling commands sent from the host processor to the drive to enable faster application activities for the end user... {see rest of the press release at website listed at bottom of post}


=============================================


Deskstar 7K500 Specifications

Deskstar 7K500 models Capacity (GB) RPM Interface

HDS725050KLAT80 500 7200 Parallel-ATA

HDS725050KLA360 500 7200 Serial-ATA


Configuration Parallel-ATA, Serial-ATA

Interface ATA 133, SATA-II 3.0Gb/s
Capacity (GB)1 500
Data heads (physical) 5/10

Performance
Data buffer2 (MB) 8 16
Rotational speed (RPM) 7,200
Media transfer rate (max. Mbits/sec) 817
Interface transfer rate (max. MB/sec) 133 300
Sustained data rate (MB/sec) 64.8 - 31 (zone 0 - 29)
Seek time average, (read, typical (MS))3 8.5

Reliability
Error rate (non-recoverable) 1 in 10E14
Start/stops (at 40° C) 50,000

Acoustic
Idle (Bels) 3.1

Power
Requirement +5 VDC (+/- 5%), +12 VDC (+10%/-8%)
Dissipation
Startup current (max. A) 2.0 (+12V) & 1.1 (+5V) 2.0 (+12V) & 1.2 (+5V)
Idle (W) 9.0 9.6

Physical size
Height (mm) 25.4
Width (mm) 101.6
Depth (mm) 146
Weight (max. g) 700


Specifications:



Press Release:

edit:Fixed enourmous links

 

[Fushigi]

Hitachi is currently shipping the Deskstar 7K80 and expects to begin shipping the Deskstar T7K250 and Deskstar 7K500 in Q1 2005.

I was just about to build my AV server with 400GB drives. Now I think I'll have to wait a couple more months.

 

[Mercutio]

Sob.

The N-word no-warranty-service-for-motherboards company has 250GB 7k250s for $125. That's a pretty good start for one's media storage.

 

[timwhit]

Mercutio - Every company in the world has something about it that people don't like. It's stupid to stop buying from them just because of one small thing. Think about all the good service they have given you over the years. One bad experience shouldn't stop you from buying from a retailer that you have used for years.

 

[Mercutio]

Wrong.

This is a certified BIG DEAL timwhit.

Basically my experience tells me that boards are either going to die 1. on arrival, 2. at some point while I'm installing them (I'll admit to dropping a screw on the wrong part of a board a few times in my life) or 3.) Sometime in the first three or four months after the customer takes delivery... and most of those seem to be marginal, rather than catastrophic failures (one set of USB ports dies, or the onboard NIC stops working or something).

Newegg used to warranty the first year. And that's all I really cared about. From experience I know that a motherboard that makes it a year is probably going to serve for the whole life of the computer.

At the very least, RMA to manufacturer is going to double my turnaround time in dealing with a defective product. That's not cool, especially for something that has an above average chance (compared to all the other parts I buy, anyway) of being DOA.

 

[LunarMist]

Who wants 5x100GB platters? I would rather wait a bit for Seagate's 3x166GB/platter drive.

 

[sechs]

I put as much faith in Hitachi's 5x100 as I do Seagate's 3x166.

 

[LunarMist]

I do not see how religion has any bearing on the comparison. I simply prefer cooler and quieter drives with faster transfer rates. Presumably the drives with more platters will be more expensive as well.

 

[sechs]

I prefer realiability over performance.

I sincerely doubt that there will be a price difference based upon the number of platters.

 

[LunarMist]

Wow, are Hitachi drives more reliable than Seagate drives now? I don't have access to the SR database and have been out of the loop. I was rather unimpressed by the 3-week Hitachi RMA though.

 

[Tea]

1: Yes, LM, you can confidently expect Hitachi drives to be more reliable than Seagate drves.

2: No, LM, you cannot expect sensible results out of the SR reliability "survey". It's hocus-pocus blended psudo-science. If you really want to make real-world decisions based on myth, rumour, and prejudice, you would be well advised to select a single-malt source of said MR&P that is personally known to you and more-or-less respected - i.e., for example, Sechs, Mercutio or Tannin (for Tannin's MR&P, see (1) above).

3: About service and warranty and why it matters: what Mercuto said.

 

[Tea]

PS: can some kind moderator un-wide the thread?

 

[Handruin]

PS: can some kind moderator un-wide the thread?

Fixed.

 

[Buck]

Thank you.

 

[LunarMist]

1: Yes, LM, you can confidently expect Hitachi drives to be more reliable than Seagate drves.

I assume you mean the Seagate ATA drives have problems, not the SCSI drives. I have been using nothing but Seagato boot drives for years: 18XL, X15, X15-36LP, 15K.3.

2: No, LM, you cannot expect sensible results out of the SR reliability "survey". It's hocus-pocus blended psudo-science. If you really want to make real-world decisions based on myth, rumour, and prejudice, you would be well advised to select a single-malt source of said MR&P that is personally known to you and more-or-less respected - i.e., for example, Sechs, Mercutio or Tannin (for Tannin's MR&P, see (1) above).

I was being a bit sarcastic about the SR reliability database, Tony. You may recall that I agreed with your comments in the threads at SR. I think you know why I did not participate in the survey.

 

[Tea]

Actually, I'm not qualified to have a real opinion (i.e., one that carries genuine weight) about ATA drive reliability anymore. The reality is that we no longer see any sensible number of drives from any maker bar Samsung. Tannin and I can attest to the fact that the astonishingly good Samsung reliability we have often written about before continues pretty much unchanged. Aside from that, though, Seagate could be making their drives out of recycled fish bladders and Maxtor could be shipping die-cast platinum HDAs with diamond-studded logic boards. We just wouldn't know anymore: we only use Samsung.

Except for SCSI, of course: in SCSI we only use Seagate. Every SCSI drive we sell in an average year is a Seagate.

Yes, both of them.

I am, however, as entitled as the next man to an opinion, an as entitled as anyone else to an opinion on HDD reliability, using the same exact evidence that any other meatball poster on SR uses: i.e., 100% pure MR&P (myth, rumour and prejudice). On the MR&P scale, Seagate IDE drives score very low, just marginally above Western Digital (or possibly Tandon, if you are RWI).

Oddly enough, before we gave up and threw out the last of our under-factory-warranty Seagate and WD IDE drives, their measured real-world reliability was even worse than their score on the MR&P scale. But that was a while ago. I'm talking about drives in the 8 to 40GB range, mostly 17 to 30GB units. That sort of dates them.

MR&P, on the other hand, never goes out of date.

 

[LunarMist]

Well, you will probably horrified to know that I purchased a 100GB Seagate Monumentus 5400.2 from Newegg on Tuesday, before I read this thread. Now I see that they are even less at CompUSA this week and was contemplating adding a couple more.