Company Delivers on 3.5-inch Form Factor Strategy with New Deskstar T7K500 and 7K160 and CimemaStar Products

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi) today announced worldwide availability of its Deskstar T7K500, Deskstar 7K160 and CinemaStar hard disk drives (HDDs). Delivering on the company's strategy to expand its participation in the 3.5-inch hard drive segment as announced in April of this year, the new lines of 3.5-inch products target expanded application areas across high-capacity consumer and commercial PCs, gaming systems and digital video recorders.

The new Deskstar and CinemaStar hard drives use 160GB+ per platter technology to deliver up to a half terabyte (TB) of storage capacity. The hard drives feature 7,200 RPM spin speeds and 3.0Gb/s Serial-ATA (SATA) interfaces to deliver maximum performance.

"Hitachi has consistently provided hard drives with superior quality and reliability. With these new drives, which have feature-sets that are optimized for specific applications, we will be able to further target Hitachi products based on specific customer needs," said Jerry Kagele, executive vice president at Bell Microproducts. "Thanks to Hitachi, we are able to provide our customers with a broad range of hard drive products to address every application need."

Application-specific Features

Recognizing the growing consumer use of video, audio and pictures in their everyday lives, Hitachi has optimized and targeted its hard disk drive products for an expanded application set.

For example, the CinemaStar is uniquely optimized for streaming consumer electronics applications with SMART Command Transport and adaptive error recovery for optimized video streaming and picture quality, and silent-seek acoustics for "bedroom quiet" operation.

The Deskstar products are ideal for consumer PCs and gaming systems where speed and capacity are paramount. These drives feature Native Command Queuing (NCQ), enabling fast data transfer rates and up to 16 MB cache on SATA models.

Both the Deskstar and CinemaStar drives feature Parallel-ATA (PATA) 133 interfaces, in addition to 3.0Gb/s SATA, "Thermal Fly Height Control" (TFC) to improve data integrity; and an optional low-power mode to minimize power requirements, enabling cooler system operation.

"The delivery of Hitachi's Deskstar T7K500 and 7K160 and CinemaStar is testament to our continued investment in 3.5-inch desktop hard drives. With digital media applications continuing to be a strong driver of desktop hard disk drive growth, our broad range of capacities and industry-leading performance provide our customers with a competitive advantage when developing systems that span high-capacity consumer PCs and high-end gaming systems and digital video recorders," commented Jose Antelo, vice president and general manager, Business Management, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.

The Deskstar T7K500, Deskstar 7K160 and CinemaStar drives are shipping today worldwide in the distribution channel and the Deskstar products are also shipping in the retail channel.

Hitachi's Deskstar hard drives meet the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) compliance directive issued by the European Union (EU).

For additional information, please visit Hitachi's Web site at www.hitachigst.com.