The press release
PRESS RELEASE
Hitachi Shatters Capacity Record with World's First Terabyte Hard Drive
1TB Achievement Gives Consumers Colossal Storage Capacity for the Digital Lifestyle
CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW 2007, LAS VEGAS – January 5, 2007 – Consumers' ability to store video, photos, music and other valued data will reach new heights as Hitachi Global Storage Technologies today announced the industry's first terabyte (TB) hard drive. Delivering superior performance and reliability, as well as capacity, Hitachi's 1TB hard drive meets the needs of consumers who want to create, share and store their digital information, and lots of it. Hitachi's Deskstar® 7K1000 will begin shipping to retail customers in the first quarter of 2007 at a suggested retail price of $399 (USD), or 40 cents per gigabyte (GB). This new consumer-friendly price makes ultra-high storage capacity more affordable and accessible than ever before.
Along with the Deskstar 7K1000 for the retail market, Hitachi is also announcing today a CinemaStar version 1TB hard drive, which provides optimized capabilities specifically designed for digital video recording (DVR) applications. Consumers have come to rely on their digital video recorders (DVRs) to record and store their favorite programs, and with the increasing availability of high-definition (HD) TV programming, 1TB of storage will become a necessity. High-definition video requires 4 to 5 times more storage capacity than standard-definition video and a terabyte drive allows viewers to easily store and retrieve almost 250 hours of HD programming (additional storage facts can be found in the accompanying press release addendum).
"The industry's first one-terabyte hard drive represents a milestone that is 50 years in the making, and it reasserts the hard drive's leadership as the highest-capacity, lowest-cost storage technology," said Shinjiro Iwata, chief marketing officer, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. "In the 51 st year, Hitachi is leading a new era for hard drives -- not only providing large amounts of affordable storage, but also customizing and optimizing hard drives to deliver products that are smarter, more durable and more useful to the consumer."
Consumers have entered an era where everything they capture on digital still or video, listen to and write, can be saved and shared for future enjoyment. In the connected home, storage becomes the epicenter of the home network, linking the living room, the office and the bedroom together in a truly digitally-connected home. The family's games, home movies, photos and music can be stored and accessed from a variety of digital entertainment devices within the home.
As the distribution of video content to social networking sites and to handheld devices becomes more commonplace, storage capacity requirements will reach new heights. In this scenario, consumers can begin to imagine what they would do with all that capacity. With 1TB, Hitachi's Deskstar 7K1000, for PCs and home media centers and the CinemaStar 7K1000 for DVRs help to usher in this new era.
Hitachi's 1TB products deliver the performance and reliability required for the digital lifestyle. The 3.5-inch, 7200 RPM Parallel-ATA/Serial-ATA hard drives are built on the industry's most reliable perpendicular magnetic recording technology, first established with Hitachi's Travelstar 2.5-inch and 1.8-inch product lines.
"Consumers who increasingly rely on hard disk drives to store their digital memories are seeking higher capacity and more reliable HDDs," said John Rydning, research manager for hard disk drives at IDC. "Reaching 1 TB of capacity in a disk drive is a testament to 50 years of innovation by the hard disk drive industry, and helps to ensure sufficient storage capacity is available to meet increasing consumer storage requirements."
Maximizing Value - The "Smart" Hard DriveHitachi is focused on maximizing the value of the hard drive by spearheading the era of the "smart" hard drive. Customized features have been incorporated into Hitachi's hard drives, tailoring them for the application-set that they serve. To that end, Hitachi's 1TB hard drives are targeted to two distinct application areas:
- Deskstar 7K1000 – gaming and high-performance
PCs, external storage devices and upgrade applications
- SATA 3.0Gb/s and PATA-133 interfaces
- Ramp load design for increased shock protection
- Three low-power idle modes to boost power efficiency
- CinemaStar 7K1000 – DVR applications
- Adaptive error recovery and SMART command transport for optimized video streaming and picture quality
- Smooth Stream Technology to optimize the drive for audio/video applications requiring reliable storage
- "Bedroom quiet" acoustics
Finally, an enterprise version of the TB drive designed for lower duty-cycle, high-capacity enterprise environments is currently under evaluation at major OEM customers and is expected to be available in the second quarter.
Pricing and Availability for the Deskstar 7K1000The Deskstar 7K1000 SATA version will be available in Q1 2007 at 750-GB and one-TB capacities. The 1TB capacity point will have a suggested retail price of $399 (USD).
The CinemaStar 1TB hard drive will be available in the second quarter.
Technical Specifications:
Deskstar 7K1000
1000/750 GB – SATA
(GB = 1 billion bytes, accessible
capacity may be less)
148 billion bits per square inch maximum areal density
1070 Mb/s max. media data rate
8.7 ms average seek time (with command overhead)
7,200 RPM, 4.17 ms average latency
Serial-ATA 3.0Gb/s
32 MB data buffer – SATA
26.1 mm in height (max)
700g in weight (max)
5/4 platters, 10/8 recording heads – SATA
300 G/1 ms pulse non-operating shock
9.0 (5 disk)/8.1 (4 disk) watt idle power – SATA
2.9 Bels typical idle acoustics
5-60 degrees C operating temperature
CinemaStar
Specifications will be
available at the time of product
shipment
About Hitach Global Storage Technologies
Technologies is a storage technology leader, founded in 2003 through the combination of Hitachi's and IBM's hard disk drive businesses. Hitachi GST enables users to fully engage in the digital lifestyle by providing high-value hard disk storage in formats suitable for the office, on the road and in the home.
With its legacy in hard drive invention, Hitachi GST led the industry in celebrating the storage technology's golden anniversary in 2006. The hard drive has had a profound effect on the computing and consumer electronics industries after five decades of innovation. That heritage lives on at Hitachi GST today through products that define the standard for hard drive miniaturization, capacity, performance and reliability.
With approximately 30,000 employees worldwide, Hitachi GST offers a comprehensive range of hard drive products for desktop computers, high-performance servers, notebooks and consumer devices. For more information, please visit the company's Web site 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 356,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2005 (ended March 31, 2006 ) consolidated sales totaled 9,464 billion yen ($80.9 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 , please visit the company's website at http://www.hitachi.com.
