Hitachi Global Storage Technologies today announced a new 10K RPM, 6Gb/s Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) Enterprise hard drive, the Hitachi Ultrastar C10K600.

Hitachi claims that the new 2.5-inch, 600GB Hitachi drive delivers up to 15 percent better random and 18 percent faster sequential performance than competitive products on the market today. The Ultrastar C10K600 drive is also at least 22 percent lower than the competition.

The Ultrastar C10K600 drive family is offered in 300GB, 450GB and 600GB versions, providing capacity parity with 3.5-inch drives. At 2.5-inches, these small form factor drives occupy 70 percent less physical space and consume 65 percent less power than Hitachi?s 3.5-inch enterprise hard drives.

The drives ship with a dual-port 6Gb/s SAS interface, providing fast data throughput, configuration flexibility and investment protection. The Ultrastar C10K600 is the only drive in its class to use a 64MB cache, which is designed to efficiently manage data and optimize the drive?s read/write response time.

The new Ultrastar drives also feature average seek times as low as 3.7 milliseconds and the fast rotational speeds reduce average latency time to 3.0 milliseconds.

The Ultrastar C10K600 incorporates Advanced Power Management capabilities to achieve high power efficiency. The technology provides IT managers with multiple power mode options for achieving performance requirements with the lowest possible energy expenditure. The Advanced Power Management implementation in the Ultrastar C10K600 delivers an a random read/write operating power specification of 5.6 watts and idle mode of 3.1 watts.

The new Ultrastar C10K600 drive family also offers optional Bulk Data Encryption for hard-drive-level data security. These self-encrypting models are designed to the Trusted Computing Group?s Enterprise A Security Subsystem Class encryption specification and allow customers to reduce costs associated with drive retirement and extend drive life by enabling swift and secure re-purposing of drives.

The drive includes a host of technologies designed to maximize reliability in mission-critical environments. Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB) motors deliver a low acoustic rating and improved data integrity, while Rotational Vibration Safeguard (RVS) technology anticipates and counteracts disturbances that can occur in multi-drive configurations. In addition, the Ultrastar C10K600 drive uses Hitachi-patented head load/unload technology to minimize integration induced drive damage.

The Ultrastar C10K600 is now shipping to Hitachi's customers worldwide, and has already been qualified by select OEMs.