Hitachi Accelerates the “Tera Era” With Delivery of New Power-Efficient Terabyte Hard Drive
Wed 09 July, 2008

Three-Disk Hitachi Design Delivers Best-in-Class Power Ratings without
Sacrificing Performance

SAN JOSE, Calif. – July 9, 2008 – With today’s announcement of its second-generation one terabyte hard drive, the Deskstar 7K1000.B, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi) is forecasting the dawn of a new age in technology that it has dubbed the “Tera Era.” As the amount of digital information created, captured and duplicated around the world continues to grow at an uninterrupted, unrelenting pace, Hitachi’s vision is that three elements – rich media content, culture, and increasing capacity – are uniting to create an entirely new landscape for enterprise and consumer data storage. It is against this exciting backdrop that Hitachi is announcing the Deskstar 7K1000.B, the world’s most energy-efficient 7,200 RPM one terabyte (1TB) hard drive.

The Deskstar 7K1000.B provides an exceptional blend of power efficiency and performance, making it an ideal solution for power-friendly consumer and commercial PCs. The new three-disk design improves idle power consumption up to 43 percent over its 1TB predecessor, which was already among the industry’s most energy efficient hard drives. Increased protection against data loss and piracy is provided via Bulk Data Encryption (BDE) which is available as an optional feature to users. Hitachi is also shipping the Deskstar E7K1000, designed to provide high-capacity storage for low-duty-cycle, 24x7 applications.

Hitachi debuted the industry’s first 1TB hard drive in January 2007 to address consumers’ insatiable appetite for storage capacity. Entire libraries of photos, movies, music and games are increasingly being stored and accessed from a variety of digital entertainment devices within the home and a plethora of mobile devices. As the distribution of video content to social networking sites and to handheld devices becomes more commonplace, storage capacity requirements will only continue to increase. Hitachi’s latest terabyte drive delivers the performance and capacity required for today’s increasingly mobile digital lifestyle.

The new 7,200 RPM, 3.5-inch drives are available in a range of capacities from 160GB to 1TB. The drives are built using Hitachi’s proven and patented perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) heads and disks, delivering a maximum of 375GB of storage per disk with a high level of reliability.

“Hitachi pioneered the industry’s first terabyte hard drive, so we are pleased to see how the market for high capacity desktop and laptop drives has grown substantially in the past year,” said Larry Swezey, director, Consumer and Commercial HDD Marketing and Strategy, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. “Now through the application of Hitachi’s advanced head, media and channel technologies, we can bring to market a terabyte drive using only three disks that has advanced performance and best-in-class power consumption. This will allow us to take the next step in making terabyte technology available and affordable in the personal storage, consumer electronics, desktop and enterprise segments.”

The Growing Importance of Power Efficiency

By applying Hitachi’s seventh-generation power management technology and innovations pioneered on the popular 2.5-inch Travelstar line of mobile hard drives, the Deskstar 7K1000.B delivers best-in-class power management and thermal emissions to help manufacturers meet or exceed energy compliance targets.

Power consumption has become an important factor in technology purchase decisions, with an increasing number of consumers now actively seeking out products that are ENERGY STAR® compliant. The ENERGY STAR 4.0 specifications released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are recognized worldwide as a way to identify energy-efficient PCs and other computer equipment. PCs that meet the ENERGY STAR 4.0 criteria are expected to become increasingly popular by consumer and commercial customers for years to come. Some corporations are choosing to purchase ENERGY STAR PCs as part of their “green” initiatives. The low power characteristics of the Deskstar 7K1000.B hard drive contribute to a reduction in overall system power requirements, which helps PC manufacturers achieve ENERGY STAR ratings.

“With rising energy costs, power concerns are likely to migrate from the datacenter to compute hardware that is spread across an entire organization, including desktop PCs,” according to John Rydning, IDC's research director for hard disk drives. “Hitachi is doing its part to enable more power efficient PCs by reducing the power consumption of the hard drive, as demonstrated with its newest one terabyte drive designed especially for desktop PC applications.”

Protect Your Data

The Deskstar 7K1000.B also features optional Bulk Data Encryption (BDE) for hard drive-level data security. Previously, data on a hard drive could be protected either through software-based encryption or a system-level password. However, hard drive-level encryption provides improved performance and a higher level of security than any of the previously available options.

When employing bulk data encryption, data is scrambled using a key as it is being written to the disk and then descrambled with the key as it is retrieved. Thus, data encryption at the hard-drive level represents a more sophisticated approach of securing users’ data and is generally considered to be virtually impenetrable. The Deskstar 7K1000.B uses an Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) that has been certified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to deliver the strongest commercially available data security protection¹ . Only hard drives that have received this certification are eligible to be used by the U.S. government for national security applications.

Performance for the Enterprise

Hitachi also announced today the Deskstar E7K1000, a drive designed for business critical storage systems where a combination of power, reliability and performance is of critical importance. The drives ship with a 32MB buffer, five-year warranty, 1.2 million hour Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) and Rotational Vibration Safeguard (RVS) technology for robust performance in multi-drive environments. The Deskstar E7K1000 has the same low power characteristics and optional encryption technology as its desktop-class counterpart, but was specifically designed for use in nearline storage for deep data archival and other high density storage environments.

The new Deskstar drives feature a SATA 3Gb/s interface, which supports important features such as hot-swap capability for very high availability, Native Command Queuing (NCQ) for enhanced performance and staggered spin-up for power savings.

Availability

The Deskstar 7K1000.B and Deskstar E7K1000 will ship to customers worldwide in July.

A Hitachi white paper and more details about the Tera Era can be found at www.hitachigst.com/TeraEra.

About Hitachi Global Storage Technologies

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) develops advanced hard disk drives to store and preserve the world’s valued data. Founded by the pioneers of hard drives, Hitachi GST enables users to fully engage in the digital lifestyle by providing high-value, high-capacity storage in formats suitable for the office, in the home or on the road. With vertically integrated research, design and manufacturing capabilities, Hitachi GST delivers leadership technology and quality to its global customer base.

With approximately 32,000 employees worldwide, Hitachi GST offers a comprehensive range of hard drive products for desktop computers, high-performance storage systems and servers, notebooks and consumer devices. For more information, please visit the company’s website at www.hitachigst.com.

About Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi, Ltd., (NYSE: HIT/TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading global electronics company with approximately 384,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2006 (ended March 31, 2007) consolidated revenues totaled 10,247 billion yen ($86.8 billion). The company offers a wide range of systems, products and services in market sectors including information systems, electronic devices, power and industrial systems, consumer products, materials and financial services. For more information on Hitachi, Ltd. please visit the company's website at http://www.hitachi.com.

¹ Hitachi hard drives have received Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 197 certification. Additional information on this certification can be located at http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/STM/cavp/documents/aes/aesval.html.

One GB is equal to one billion bytes and one TB is equal to 1,000 GB when referring to hard drive capacity. Accessible capacity may be less.

Deskstar and Travelstar are trademarks of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. ENERGY STAR is a registered trademark of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies' trademarks are authorized for use in countries and jurisdictions in which Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has the right to use, market and advertise the brands. The Travelstar trademark is authorized for use in the Americas, EMEA, and the following Asia-Pacific countries and jurisdictions: Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and Taiwan. Hitachi Global Storage Technologies shall not be liable to third parties for unauthorized use of its trademarks.

Contact:
Jim Pascoe
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies
408-717-7924
james.pascoe@hitachigst.com