Hitachi GST leads 3TB enterprise drive pack

First out of the gate

Hitachi GST has announced the highest capacity large enterprise drive at 3TB.

The Ultrastar 7K3000 spins at 7,200rpm with a two million hour mean time before failure rating, the industry’s highest MTBF on a 7200rpm HDD. It has five platters and sports both SAS and SATA interface options at 6Gbit/s, another first.

There is a bulk data encryption option and a five year limited warranty. The 7K3000 SATA model uses proprietary Hitachi encryption, but the 7K3000 dual-port SAS model is designed to meet the industry standard TCG Enterprise_A encryption specification.

Hitachi GST is plugging favourable messages concerning cost, space and power draw with its 3TB product saying “To reach the same capacity as a 3TB, 3.5-inch... 7K3000 drive, customers would have to purchase three 1TB 2.5-inch 7,200 RPM drives, which will consume up to 170 per cent higher watts to power the drives and will occupy three times the storage array slots“. It says there is a 32 per cent reduction in watts/GB versus Hitachi’s prior generation 2TB A7K2000 drives.

Seagate has a 3TB FreeAgent GoFlex external drive spinning at 7200rpm, but that is not an enterprise drive in reliability terms. The same goes for WD’s 3TB Caviar Green, another external drive.

For now Hitachi GST has scooped the 3TB enterprise drive pool, but may only have a lead of a few months - ironic as Seagate has been bragging about its forthcoming areal density lead.

Hitachi GST says the 3TB product is a good fit for enterprise arrays needing flash drives for the hottest data, 10,000rpm SAS drives for active data, and bulk capacity drives for the rest.

This example of Hitachi GST's ability to push the drive capacity envelope should help its forthcoming IPO to succeed.

The Ultrastar 7K3000 family comes in 3TB and 2TB capacity points, and is shipping now with the 6Gbit/s SATA interface. The 6Gbit/s SAS versions will be available in mid-2011. ®