Hitachi Serves Up Two New 1TB CinemaStar Hard Drives
It seems like announcing new hard drives is just "the thing" to do this month, so we guess we'll pocket our shock seeing yet another outfit introduce yet another hard drive. This time, it's Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) rolling out the CinemaStar family of 3.5" hard drives, which is based on 500GB per platter technology and definitely makes a mark in the desktop HDD space.
The lineup consists of the 1TB CinemaStar 7K1000.C and the 1TB CinemaStar 5K1000 CoolSpin, with each engineered to "handle the most demanding high definition (HD) video streams and offer reliable performance, large capacity, quiet operation, advanced AV features, and low power and temperatures that help manufacturers meet design, price and performance objectives for their consumer electronics devices."
As for the latter drive in particular, the new CinemaStar 5K1000 family features the company's CoolSpin Technology, which relies on motor speed optimization to provide a balance of performance, power utilization and acoustics. By tuning the motor to make the drive spin slower, thereby reducing harmonic resonance, theCinemaStar 5K1000 is nearly silent at 2.4 bels during operation, draws 3.3 watts or less idle power and generates less heat, but in doing so it takes a hit on performance.
In addition to SmoothStream, the new CinemaStar family integrates a few other features that are found on all Hitachi drives:
The CinemaStar 7K1000.C and 5K1000 will be available in volume starting Q4, but pricing has yet to be revealed.
The lineup consists of the 1TB CinemaStar 7K1000.C and the 1TB CinemaStar 5K1000 CoolSpin, with each engineered to "handle the most demanding high definition (HD) video streams and offer reliable performance, large capacity, quiet operation, advanced AV features, and low power and temperatures that help manufacturers meet design, price and performance objectives for their consumer electronics devices."
As for the latter drive in particular, the new CinemaStar 5K1000 family features the company's CoolSpin Technology, which relies on motor speed optimization to provide a balance of performance, power utilization and acoustics. By tuning the motor to make the drive spin slower, thereby reducing harmonic resonance, theCinemaStar 5K1000 is nearly silent at 2.4 bels during operation, draws 3.3 watts or less idle power and generates less heat, but in doing so it takes a hit on performance.
In addition to SmoothStream, the new CinemaStar family integrates a few other features that are found on all Hitachi drives:
- SMART command transport to optimize the drive settings for best video streaming performance
- Advanced auto power management with multiple power mode options so that performance requirements can be achieved using the lowest possible energy expenditure
- Expanded temperature range of 0-70oC (CinemaStar 5K1000) and 0-65oC (CinemaStar 7K1000) in operating mode to enable fan-free, quiet DVR designs, which is important for drives that often “live” in a consumer’s bedroom
- Intelligent idle time functions that maintain customer data signal quality for reliable long-term storage
- Advanced drive mechanics, resulting in a drive rating of 1.2 million hours MTBF2, for the grueling 24x7 operation that is commonplace among music- and movie-loving consumers
- Hitachi patented load/unload ramp mechanism that helps prevent disk wear and protects the disk during non-operation
- Thermal fly-height control for enhanced drive reliability during lengthy video encoding/decoding sessions; especially relevant today when HD movies can reach more than three hours in length
The CinemaStar 7K1000.C and 5K1000 will be available in volume starting Q4, but pricing has yet to be revealed.
