Hitachi announced today new Deskstar hard drives, the T7K500 and 7K160. Compared to the T7K250 and 7K500, the T7K500 singles out because of their higher surface density. If the other drives' platter density is of 125 GB, the T7K500's reaches 160GB. It should result in higher sequential transfer rates. Hitachi hasn't yet however communicated figures on the subject.
4 capacities are announced: 250, 320, 400 and 500 GB. These drives respectively include 2, 2, 3 and 3 platters. Contrary to what we could have thought, Hitachi says that the 250 and 400 GB version use both faces of their platters. We think then that they won't use them entirely and that the average access time of these discs will be better than the 320 and 500 GB version.
For each of the four capacities, three version will be available: Parallel-ATA with 8MB of cache, Serial-ATA with 8 MB of cache and Serial-ATA with 16 MB of cache. Of course SATA version will support SATA 3 Gbits/s and NCQ.
The 7K160 is a mono platter version intended for entry level products like the 7K80 was. It also has a 160 GB platter and will be available in 80 GB or 160 GB versions. Only one face of the platter is in use in the first version. Capacities are in consequence doubled compared to the previous generation. Access time has also been reduced from 8.8 to 8.5ms. The 7K160 cache will be of 8 MB whether if it is for the 160 or 80 GB and whether if it is P-ATA or S-ATA.
Another innovation for Hitachi: the CinemaStar T7K500 and 7K160… which are in fact Deskstar drives with standard acoustic management activated by default. They are more silent but also slower. Access time increases from 8.5 to 14ms. The only dark spot of this announcement is that the worldwide availability isn't expected before the beginning of the third quarter. Is Hitachi trying to beat Seagate for the delay between announcement and availability?
