Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) today
announced that it has shipped more than 25 million Travelstar™
Z-series, 7 millimeter (mm) z-height, 2.5-inch hard disk drives
(HDD), enabling a new era of thin and light portable computers,
ultra-compact CE devices and industrial systems. The company also
announced that it is now shipping its new 500GB, Travelstar Z7K500
drive – the industry’s fastest and highest capacity, one-disk,
7,200 RPM HDD. All Hitachi GST Z-series drives can serve as a
direct replacement for standard, 2.5-inch 9.5mm hard drives. They
feature common connectors and mounting points for simple
integration into existing systems, and enable greater design
flexibility to differentiate and meet market demands for new,
thinner, lighter and more robust devices.
New Ultra-thin Hitachi GST Travelstar
Z7K500, 7,200 RPM, 7mm 2.5-inch Hard Drive (Photo: Business
Wire)
Enabling Thin and Light Designs
Embraced by many of the top PC OEMs, the Ultrabook specification
authored by Intel™ offers opportunities to create a compelling
tablet-like computing experience in an ultra thin laptop design. In
addition to providing a thin and light design, instant-on
capabilities, and an extended battery life, PC OEMs must also
create high-quality, cost-effective solutions to help drive
competition, differentiation and mass adoption.
To help achieve this goal, a key part of Intel’s Ultrabook
specification is combining a 7mm HDD with a SSD cache, giving OEMs
the ability to explore the limits of modern ultra thin and light
designs without sacrificing capacity, performance, battery life or
quality. For instance, a Hitachi 7mm HDD combined with an SSD cache
can help OEMs meet the Ultrabook specification for performance and
start up times, while providing a high-capacity, space-efficient,
and cost-effective solution. Based on Hitachi’s OEM customer plans,
this combination is expected to ship in a significant majority of
Ultrabooks in 2012.
“We expect cache SSD shipments to soar over the next couple of
years due to the rise in Ultrabook demand,” said Ryan Chien,
research associate for memory & storage at IHS. “Shipments of
cache SSD units in 2012 are projected to reach 25.7 million units –
a 2,817 percent increase compared to 2011 – and will reach
approximately 121 million units by 2015. This growth is extremely
significant for HDD manufacturers, as combining slim magnetic
storage with caching SSDs gives customers high-speed access to
massive amounts of storage at an affordable price.”
When designing today’s portable and compact solutions, solid
state drives (SSD) offer great performance, but currently none come
close to the cost-per-gigabyte economics of hard drives as SSDs are
largely cost prohibitive for the mainstream ultra-portable consumer
market. SSDs can be 12 times more expensive on a cost per gigabyte
basis when compared to Hitachi Z-series drives. Competing hybrid
drives are another option, but current implementations do not offer
the 7mm form factor and may not meet price/performance targets.
With Hitachi Z-series drives, manufacturers can utilize space
savings to design thinner devices, increase shock robustness,
improve unplugged time by using a larger battery or allow for
enhanced cooling and air flow due to the thinner HDD design.
“Slim, compact, light-weight - no matter how you phrase it,
there’s no denying that thin is in, and this trend is driving broad
market acceptance for our 7,200 and 5,400 RPM 7mm 2.5-inch drives,”
said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing at
Hitachi GST. “We are proud to report that all major PC OEMs have
qualified our previous generation 7mm drives for a variety
notebooks, Ultrabooks and CE devices, confirming that the industry
continues to recognize the value and benefits of this new form
factor. By adding the first 500GB, high-performance 7mm drive to
our portfolio, Hitachi GST now offers the market’s broadest 7mm
2.5-inch hard drive portfolio to meet the needs of a diverse mobile
computing and storage segment.”
“We’re witnessing a change in the industry in terms of how
laptops are designed. From manufacturing, performance, efficiency,
weight, aesthetics and features, we’re bringing compelling
advantages to the end user,” said Wentao Yang, vice president of
Global Procurement, Lenovo. “Equipping our laptops and Ultrabooks
with Hitachi Z-series drives allows us to offer new designs, while
ensuring that we have the quality and reliability that our
customers expect.”
New 7mm Travelstar Z7K500 2.5-inch Hard Drive
The new 7,200 RPM Travelstar Z7K500 family delivers on the
company’s proven strengths of reliability, high-performance,
low-power, exceptional shock resistance and quiet acoustics. With
an industry-first 6Gb/s SATA interface, as well as a 32MB cache and
7,200 RPMs, the new thin and rugged Travelstar Z7K500 delivers up
to 33 percent more performance¹ in PCMark® Vantage testing than
other 2.5-inch hard drives on the market.
Delivering the right balance of power and acoustics, the new
7,200 RPM Travelstar Z7K500 family features 1.8 watts (W)
read/write power and 0.8W low-power idle, and delivers a nearly
silent operation at 2.3 idle/2.4 seek bels. They also feature
Advanced Format, which increases the physical sector size on HDDs
from 512 bytes to 4,096 (4K) bytes, thereby improving drive
capacity and error correction capabilities.
Optional Travelstar Z7K500 drive models are available, including
a self encrypting drive (SED) designed to meet the highest
standards for protecting data, and an enhanced-availability (EA)
model for applications needing around-the-clock data access in
lower-transaction environments.
The Travelstar Z7K500 family comes in 500GB, 320GB and 250GB
capacities. Qualification samples of the Travelstar Z7K500 family
have been shipping since January; volume shipments will begin in
March.
About Hitachi Global Storage
Technologies
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) develops
advanced hard disk drives, enterprise-class solid state drives,
innovative external storage solutions and services used to store,
preserve and manage the world’s most valued data. Founded by the
pioneers of hard drives, Hitachi GST provides high-value storage
for a broad range of market segments, including Enterprise,
Desktop, Mobile Computing, Consumer Electronics and Personal
Storage. Hitachi GST was established in 2003 and maintains its U.S.
headquarters in San Jose, California. For more information, please
visit the company’s website at http://www.hitachigst.com.
About Hitachi, Ltd.
Hitachi, Ltd., (NYSE: HIT / TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo,
Japan, is a leading global electronics company with approximately
360,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2010 (ended March 31, 2011)
consolidated revenues totaled 9,315 billion yen ($112.2 billion).
Hitachi will focus more than ever on the Social Innovation
Business, which includes information and telecommunication systems,
power systems, environmental, industrial and transportation
systems, and social and urban systems, as well as the sophisticated
materials and key devices that support them. For more information
on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at
http://www.hitachi.com.
Hitachi GST remains an independent company until the acquisition
by Western Digital closes, anticipated to take place by March 2012.
Our product portfolio has been a driver of our success. Until the
close, we continue to execute plans for our communicated product
roadmap and both companies intend to ship all product lines in
parallel until their logical end of life. Customers can rest
assured that when the acquisition is complete all Hitachi GST terms
and conditions of the product warranty in effect at the time of
purchase will be honored.
One GB is equal to one billion bytes and one TB equals 1,000 GB
(one trillion bytes). One PB is equal to 1,000 TB (one quadrillion
bytes). Actual capacity will vary depending on operating
environment and formatting.
¹ Overall performance was benchmarked using PCMark Vantage on a
test system that consisted of a Dell Precision M4600, Intel QM67
Express Chipset, Intel Core i7-2720QM CPU @ 2.20GHz, 8GB RAM, and
AMD ATI FirePro M5950 Graphics, running Win7 Pro SP1 x64.
Travelstar is a trademark of Hitachi GST. Hitachi trademarks are
authorized for use in countries and jurisdictions in which Hitachi
has the right to market the brands. Hitachi is not liable for third
parties’ unauthorized use of Hitachi trademarks. All other
trademarks are properties of their respective owners.
Ultrabook and the Ultrabook logo are trademarks of Intel
Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.
Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available:
http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=50177029&lang=en
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