News

posted on 08 May 2008 14:56

Hitachi GST has a new 2.5-inch drive product that fails to match Western Digital's VelociRaptor in speed but beats it in capacity.

The TravelStar 7K320 offers 320GB spinning at 7,200rpm with a SATA 3Gbit/s interface. WD's VelociRaptor is the same format and interface but spins at 10,000rpm with 300GB capacity; faster but smaller.

Hitachi's new drive can optionally bulk encrypt data (BDE like Seagate's FDE or Full Disk Encryption) but the interface speed drops to SATA I - 1.5Gbit/s. Data is scrambled using a key as it is being written to the disk and then descrambled with the key as it is retrieved. Data encryption at the hard-drive level is considered to be virtually impenetrable.

An enhanced availability model will come in the third quarter of this year and will have a 24x7 availability but at what Hitachi calls a low duty cycle.

There is no advanced power management to slow the drive's spin speed when it is inactive, but Hitachi says the 7200rpm drive has the power need of a 5400rpm model. It is a 4th generation TravelStar with 60 percent more capacity than its predecessor, the now replaced TravelStar 7K200.

Interestingly Larry Swezey, Hitachi GST's consumer and commercial HDD director, is aware of the looming threat of solid-satate drives (SSD), saying: “Solid state drives (SSD) have yet to deliver an overall increase in speed, and certainly not at an affordable price. The 7,200rpm speed of the Travelstar 7K320 provides an improved overall experience, at the capacities users want and at a far lower cost than SSD.”

The drive’s quiet acoustics provide a richer audio listening experience for music, movies and games.

It is available in a range of capacities between 80 and 320GB, and is shipping now with prices starting at $220.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}