Hitachi went all in today on their commitment to 3TB hard drives after posting the Deskstar 7K3000 to their website last month. In addition to the 7K3000, Hitachi also announced the Deskstar 5K3000 and the Hitachi XL, a 3TB external hard drive.
Latest Deskstar SATA 6Gbps HDD, the 7K3000 (7200rpm), 64MB of cache. The drive is Advanced Format, leveraging 4K sectors. To get around compatibility problems with some operating systems, Hitachi includes a software download to let the drive be recognizable to most systems as a data drive. Apple, some Linux and some Windows users will be able to use the drive as a boot drive or data drive without additional hardware or software.
And 5K3000 (5400 rpm), 3TB of storage, With only 32MB of cache. The drives are probably 5,400 RPM, though Hitachi just lists Coolspin for their rotational speed. The point is however, the 5K3000 uses about 30% less power than the 7K3000.
The Hitachi Deskstar 7k3000 (HDS723030ALA640) is shipping now with a MSRP of $249.99. Whereas , the 3TB (HDS5C3030ALA630) 5K3000 will ship in Q1 2011, the 2TB (HDS5C3020ALA632) and 1.5TB (HDS5C3015ALA632) will ship in December. MSRPs for the family were not announced.
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