Hitachi unleashes new 10k RPM HDD, enter Ultrastar C10K900

Hitachi have only just unleashed some 4TB consumer hard drives, and throughout the the Thailand flood crisis, one would think we wouldn't see any new hard-drive announcements, well, you were wrong.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies have just unveiled something for the enterprise market, the Ultrastar C10K900 series. This new series comes in 300, 450, 600 and 900GB sizes, which all feature a 2.5-inch form factor, a SAS 6Gbps interface, 64MB of cache, an average seek time of 3.8 milliseconds, an average latency of 3.0ms, and an operating/idle power draw of just 5.8/3.0W. A Bulk Data Encryption option will also be available on specific models.

According to Hitachi, the new Ultrastar drives deliver 18-percent higher sequential and up to 17-percent higher random performance than their nearest competitor, and are said to be perfect for Tier 1 enterprise networked storage arrays, or for blades and other rack-mounted servers.

The new Ultrastar C10K900 HDDs have begun shipping in small quantities, and will go into volume production come Q1 2012.