Hitachi launches 900GB 10,000RPM SAS hard drive

JAPANESE STORAGE VENDOR Hitachi has released its first 900GB 10,000 RPM serial attached SCSI (SAS) hard drive.

Hitachi's 2.5in Ultrastar C10K900 is the firm's latest generation of 10,000 RPM SAS hard drives pitched at high-end workstations and servers. The C10K900 has a quoted average seek time of 3.8ms and 64MB of cache, and the firm touts improvements to power efficiency, quoting read/write operation power draw of 5.8W and an idling power use of 3W.

Aside from Hitachi's claims of speed and energy efficiency, there's also Bulk Data Encryption available across all drives in the C10 range. The drive encryption meets Trusted Computing Group's Enterprise A Security Subsystem Class criteria.

Hitachi's C10 range of 10,000 RPM SAS drives comes in 300GB, 450GB, 600GB and 900GB capacities.

Hitachi is set to become part of Western Digital next year, however it is highly likely that the Ultrastar SAS range of drives will continue, as they go up against Seagate's Savvio units. At present Western Digital concentrates primarily on the high-volume, low margin desktop market and its acquisition of Hitachi not only gives it economies of scale but also a larger presence in the lucrative workstation and server markets.

Yesterday a 4TB Hitachi standalone hard drive was pictured in Japan with a price-tag of £220. Although there's no word on when that drive will appear in UK stores, Hitachi said that it expects volume shipments of the Ultrastar C10K900 hard drive will begin in the first quarter of 2012. µ