Hitachi intros first 250GB desktop Serial ATA drive

THE DIVISION OF HITACHI that took over IBM's hard drive division said it has released a 250GB Serial ATA unit today.

The 3.5-inch Deskstar 7K250 uses 80GB+ platters combined to create 250GB, that's a quarter of a terabyte, of storage.

The 7200 rev per minute hard drive is aimed at desktop PCs but is also targeted at "near line" storage, backup, games and other apps.

Hitachi will also offer the disk drive with a non Serial ATA interface, and claims that when S-ATA is used, it will fly 150MBps across the wires.

The drive will also be available in 40, 80 and 160GB versions.

Pricing details are not yet available, although Hitachi says units will be for sale by the end of this month.

Serial ATA drives have been a little slow in arriving, although Seagate set the trend by getting product out very early indeed. Hitachi is on the Serial ATA committee and the Serial ATA-II committee, but quite possibly has been delayed by its acquisition of IBM's hard drive division. µ