Hitachi Ships Small Drives

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Timed to capitalize on the fast ramp of small form factor (SFF) enterprise hard drives in 2007, Hitachi announced today it has shipped the Ultrastar C10K147 hard drive, the company’s first SFF enterprise product. The 10,000 RPM Ultrastar C10K147 hard drive was developed specifically for high-performance and low-power requirements of servers, delivering up to 147GB1 of capacity and 3Gb/s Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interface.

With the Ultrastar C10K147 hard drive, Hitachi expands its enterprise segment participation with a broad and expanded portfolio. Along with the SFF hard drive, Hitachi’s portfolio includes the 15,000 RPM 3.5” Ultrastar 15K300 and 10,000 RPM 3.5-inch Ultrastar 10K300 hard drives for mission-critical storage and the 7,200 RPM 3.5-inch Ultrastar A7K1000 one-terabyte hard drive for lower duty-cycle enterprise applications. All three products are shipping now.

Space, Power Requirements Drive Small Form Factor Transition

Enterprise customers are increasingly seeking solutions to reduce space and power requirements in data centers. Coupled with a new interest in establishing government mandates for “green” data centers, a transition to small form factor hard drives from the traditional 3.5” drives previously used in servers is gaining a new sense of urgency. 2007 has been predicted by industry analysts as a turning point in the volume ramp of small form factor enterprise hard drives.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST)