Hitachi Deskstar Stores Half A Terabyte

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies&' new Deskstar 7K500 provides an amazing 500 Gbytes in a single 3.5-inch Serial ATA (SATA) hard drive. Aside from systems, the Deskstar 7K500 is ideal for use in NAS devices and digital video recorders (DVRs).

The Deskstar 7K500 is one of the first half-terabyte SATA drives on the market. It&'s also one of the first to feature a 3.0-Gbps SATA II interface, which is twice as fast as the original SATA 1.0 specification. This speedy new transfer rate rivals that of enterprise-class SCSI drives.

Hitachi&'s Smooth Stream technology, based on the ATA-7 AV Streaming Feature Set, enhances video streaming by allowing the host to control the drive&'s error-recovery process, thus tuning the drive to capture video data streams. Hitachi expects to see it used in high-capacity DVRs, which require hard drives optimized for the high-speed transfer of digital video.

A single-chip SATA controller with Native Command Queuing speeds the control of commands sent from the host processor to the drive. Hitachi&'s Rotational Vibration Safeguard technology ensures stability in high-vibration environments such as when multiple drives are installed in a single enclosure.

Fast and capacious, the Deskstar 7K500 also satisfies the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) compliance, a directive recently issued by the European Union to reduce lead and other hazardous substances from electronic products by August 2006. All Hitachi hard drives introduced in 2005 and beyond will be RoHS-compliant.

Having half a terabyte of storage space on a single spindle is risky because it&'s an awful lot of data to lose. System builders should encourage their customers to purchase some sort of backup device that can store as much as the hard drive they&'re using. External USB hard drives are an ideal and affordable solution for backing up single systems.