Dell Expands Server and Storage System Capacities Using New Hitachi Ultrastar Hard Drives
Tues 20 May, 2008

Hitachi Combines Performance and Power Efficiency in an Enterprise-Hardened 450GB Drive

SAN JOSE, Calif., May 20, 2008 – Hitachi Global Storage Technologies today announced that Dell (DELL) is using Ultrastar™ 15K450 hard drives, which have a low power efficiency index of 0.03 watts/GB, to deliver higher capacities across multiple platforms in its PowerEdge™ Server and PowerVault™ Storage product families. Hitachi is driving the new industry metric of “watts/GB,” as customers are increasingly making decisions based on power profile for the increasing amounts of data that they store. Hitachi’s latest Ultrastar drive clearly raises the bar for the industry with respect to “green” hard drives, without sacrificing enterprise class performance. The 3.5-inch, 15,000 RPM drives deliver 450GB of storage and a 30 percent improvement generation-to-generation in sequential throughput. They also have 50 percent more available capacity than their 300GB predecessors, but similar low power characteristics. IT managers will benefit from a lower total cost of ownership for enterprise storage, with reduced datacenter footprint and energy usage.

Dell server and storage solutions are designed for businesses seeking maximum performance and availability for email, database and other demanding enterprise applications.

“We are pleased to be the first to ship server and storage systems using high performance 450GB SAS disk drives based on Hitachi's new Ultrastar 15K450,” said Darren Thomas, vice president and general manager, Dell Enterprise Storage. “We selected Hitachi Ultrastar drives for our PowerEdge and PowerVault product families because they have always delivered the performance and rock solid reliability that customers have come to expect from Dell.”

The Ultrastar 15K450, announced in April, 2008, is designed for use in mission-critical server and storage applications, such as online transaction processing, intensive database queries and other multi-user applications. The drive features average seek times as low as 3.3 milliseconds and the fast rotational speeds reduce average latency time to 2 milliseconds, enabling customers to access data more quickly and efficiently. The drives are available with either 3Gb/s Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) or 4Gb/s Fibre Channel (FC) interfaces.

“Hitachi is decreasing the power consumption of its drives aggressively with each successive generation. The new Hitachi drives are energy efficient and provide the highest levels of reliability, capacity and I/Os per second. We are gratified by how smoothly they have moved through Dell's demanding product qualification process,” said Currie Munce, vice president and general manager, Enterprise Business Group, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. “The Ultrastar 15K450 is Hitachi’s performance leader and we are very pleased that Dell has selected it for use within its PowerEdge servers and PowerVault storage systems.”

For more information on the Dell PowerEdge server and PowerVault storage product families, please visit www.dell.com.

About Hitachi Global Storage Technologies

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies 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 33,000 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 390,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2007 (ended March 31, 2008) consolidated revenues totaled 11,226 billion yen ($112.2 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, logistics, materials and financial services. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at http://www.hitachi.com.

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.

Ultrastar is a trademark of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. Hitachi trademarks are authorized for use in countries and jurisdictions in which Hitachi has the right to use, market and advertise the brands. Contact Hitachi for more information. 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