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Hitachi Announces 400GB Hard Drive
jkcity writes "Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has announced their new 400GB 3.5-inch ATA hard drive, which they claim makes them the new capacity king. Specs on the drive are also available."
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that's a big deathstar
It looks like a nice drive for putting in a big RAID, but I'm not sure I'd like to put that much data in one place; the MTBF is about right for a modern drive, and I've had the 2 of my last 8 drives fail.
I appear to have a blog. Odd.
Here's the secret scoop on how they did it.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Finally enough place for my linux every-distribution iso collection...
Spelling mistakes: My is english spoken not tongue of mother.
Yes, yes, it's 400GB... but how big is it in units that *I* can understand, pachyderms and volkswagons?
this is the first media where i can store my full archive of low quality pr0n! i am happy now.
I'm just anxious for more and more of this technology to trickle down to laptops.
Yah, I know, it's a different environment. But have you noticed how more and more people aren't even using their desktops anymore?
We've got SATA for desktops. Still stuck with really old tech for laptops. MASSIVE disk sizes for desktops, relatively small for laptops.
C'mon. If we can get 2GB CF working properly, where in the hell is my 200GB laptop HD??
Seriously, HD capacity is the ONLY reason I fire my desktop up at ALL these days.
Well...'till HL2 ships of course...but that's another rant entirely.
Don't park drunk, accidents cause people.
What guys are you doing with so huge hard drivers? My first HD had 40MB, I know it was small number... it was less than 40 diskiettes. Today I have 120GB, and I am never out of space. 120GB is more than 120CDs. On one CD I can put whole movie or half of movie, few mp3 albums, or lots, lots of text/sources. I just have no idea what I could put on bigger drive, except movies I don't watch, music I don't listen and software I don't use.
from what I heard hitachi/ibm fixed there death stars by getting rid of the glass platters. I had two of these fail and have had one replaced with the newer style that is ok, and a older on which, is making dieing noises every once and awhile... would be nice to buy 12 of these, setup a raid 5 to give you a nice 4GB! with one hot swap spare.. nice!
Really, it doesn't matter that much anymore.
What they really should be concentrating on is reliability.
I mean, the Hitachi HDD division(sp?) is the old IBM HDD division. And they haven't that good of a track record (even though I owned a few IBM's and had 0 problems)
This is the sig that says NI (again)
The specs says it's an ATA-100, I'm far from being a hardware expert but that looks weird to me, isn't a supposedely top-notch drive supposed to support ATA-133 ?
"Naughty, naughty, naughty, you filthy old soomka !"
At these sizes, a HD is becoming the only way of backing up another HD
This is not my opinion. Actually, it's not even an opinion. And I'm nowhere to be seen near it
Excellent...(insert wiggling of fingers here)... now when the feds come knocking on my door, I only have to demagnitise one drive instead of 2... Time well spent...
I do imagine that this is more for the server market or for, as they put it, applications where tape back up would be used... I can't think of any reason to have that much information in one place, until the next version of windows comes out and youneed two of these things.
Interesting to see in the specs the capacity in terms of media content, 40,000 books...10,000 mp3's etc. That is a lot of space to fill when you get your new drive. How nice if they were supplied with a preloaded partition (100 gigs say) that contained a lot of goodies. Better still, pre-load with several partions, for example: a) Free windows software and documents b) Free Linux software and documents c) Platform independent documentation and referenc d) Non computer related stuff (Guthenburg project,for example), free graphics and sound clip libraries. When you partition the disk you decide which, if any you want to keep for later installation, and eventually, when you have copied what you need, you format to a native partition.
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
"What guys are you doing with so huge hard drivers?"
Plan on running Longhorn.
There are 5 80gb platters in this harddisk. They're just putting more of what makes a normal harddisk into it. I don't think that's a good idea: The result is probably heavier and more mechanically fragile than most harddisks. In my experience, disks with more platters fail sooner than disks with only one or two platters.
I can't but smile at the irony of modding the above "redundant", I could explkain why but I guess the beauty of it resides in its subtility :)
Trolling using another account since 2005.
.. why the rumours are MS aren't going to put an HD in X-Box 2 - we now have an HD that can hold the entire X-Box 1 game catalogue.
This aught to push the 320GB drives into the sub-$200 category within a few weeks. About time, too, the prices have lingered between $250 and $300 for months now.
;-)
Nothing like a bigger-better-faster-harder product to make the rest nice and cheap.
"The Deskstar 7K400 provides enough capacity to store the following:
....
400 hours of standard TV programming
45 hours of HDTV programming
More than 6,500 hours of high quality digital music"
"or, after you install Windows and Office XP...:
13 minutes of standard TV programming
4 minutes of HDTV programming
More than 6,500 seconds of high quality digital music"
Well, if you buy one of these, dont forget to double the space and increase the speed!
I thought that the news about this drive was that it's 7200rpm - the former "biggest" was maxtor at 5400rpm only. (IIRC)
(i say only, because I hope nobody is using those terrible 4200rpm bigfoot drives these days)
My life in the land of the rising sun.
The person writing the specs is either incompetent or insane. For 400GB of storage, they quote:
"45 hours of HDTV broadcast, or
4,000 high-resolution x-rays, or
40,000 typical library books, or
10,000 high-quality, 4 minute MP3 recordings"
Wow... I never knew that a typical library book took up 10MB (more like 100k). What are they doing, scanning all the pages in? And what kind of bitrate are they using for a 4 minute MP3 recording to take up 40MB?
Nothing to see here
My first hard drive was 270 Megs. When it was new, I thought I'd never fill it up. When I inevitably did fill it, I upgraded to a "huge" 3GB drive. I figured that would be more than enough to last me for a while. It was. Then I discovered mp3s. Right now, I've got a total of about 50GB of space, and spend half my time working out what data I no longer need in order to make space for what I'm doing.
Noe, 400GB seems vast. More than enough to be going on with, but I know this would fill up as well. So will the 4TB drive I'll eventually have. I wonder if we'll ever have "enough" space. I also wonder what I'll actually fill all this space with.
One thing that worries me is that in the release it says "The Deskstar 7K400 is ideally suited for nearline storage and other low I/O applications" i.e. don't use it much. Also I can't find the MTBF which is worrying
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
..after the spectacular failure of the smaller IBM Deathstar, the new 400GB Hitachi Imperial Deathstar will be protected against failure by a forcefield projected around it from the nearby motherboard that it orbits.
No it isn't! On /., home of the nerds, we should know that a terabyte is 1024 GB or 2 to the power 40 bytes.
Except of course we're talking about HDD's and not real space. Like it or not the term KB, MB and GB when used in conjunction with HDD specs refers to 10^3, 10^6 and 10^9 respectively. A terrabyte hard drive would mean 10^12 unfortunately, or a thousand of what they call a 'Gigabyte' even if it is just 931 real Gigabytes.
Now every machine in the house (including my 5 year old's box) backs itself up completely every night
If I ever get really paranoid, I'll buy a second drive and have them mirrorred... but that's another day. :)
Seriously, these single huge drives make great backup solutions... just be sure to get two if the data really matters.
Agile Artisans
'I don't know why anyone uses a laptop' appears to be a very common opinion on Slashdot. So, as a laptop user for over seven years, let me fill you in with why I prefer a laptop:
I much prefer the digitally-connected LCD monitor, which is a lot sharper and less tiring than any CRT I've used. I have an external monitor also (LCD, naturally) and find the added desktop space invaluable for serious work. Cleartype on a digital LCD is very nice, too. I know you can do all this on a desktop now, but laptops had digitally-connected LCDs and second monitor ports long before DVI and dual-head graphics cards were a common option. I love the fact that I can carry it around and from room to room easily, and still be internet-connected through WiFi. I love that my stuff and environment is always there whether at work, home, or away on business. I love that it is completely silent - this was in fact why I started with a laptop in the first place; I simply could not stand desktop noise when researching/writing. I like being able to put it away in a drawer when I'm not using it.
The laptop percentage of the market relative to desktops has been steadily increasing over the last few years, so it appears that many people agree with me. I personally could never use a desktop as my primary machine, although I recognise that people have different priorities and that for many a desktop is a better choice (cost & power being the key issues.) I did recently get a Shuttle home server solely for storage (670gb) and PVR purposes. Apart from the TV connection for watching programmes, it is accessed through terminal services over WiFi - from my laptop.
The whole point of RAID is that the disks are closly dependednt on each other
Really? What about RAID 1? Mirrored disks are in no way dependent on each other. You can do a little learnin' here.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
I guess these large drives will - when they become a little bit cheaper - be the perfect backup solution for home users who care about their data. For years now I have been searching for a relatively cheap way of backing up the incredible amount of data on the hard disks of my home PCs. My primary home PC has a only 36GB Raptor for the OS and an 80GB for data, but my little file server here has a 40GB, a 60GB, a 120GB and a 250GB disk. That's 470GB of space, filled with about 350GB of data (fansubs, video editing stuff, all of my CDs and LPs in mp3 form, all my savegames, various hard disk images of my Notebook with various OS installed to swap around, etc.). For a home user, there just IS no way of backing up this amount of data. Tape backup? Yeah, sure. You would need a DLT or Ultrium streamer - at the price of a small car. Burning CDs or DVDs? Yup, the data could be burned - on about 80 DVDs or 500 CDs. And that at least once a week, to keep the backup current. The only way is to install an additional hard disk and then simply copy all the data over or to use a backup software and write everything into one backup file on that disk.
I already had considered something like this, but the problem was that one single additional hard disk would not have been enough. One of these 400GB monsters might be enough, with a bit of compression used.
Is there any reason (apart from maybe lack of sales - but that's probably due to the price) why tape backup is not cheaper? I mean, one 40/80 DLT tape has about the same price as an 80GB hard disk. And it's simply a roll of magnetic tape. And the tape drives are simply so expensive that it's ridiculous.
In the past 3 years, I've had 3 of my hard drives die.
Meanwhile, the 340 megger in my 486 firewall chugs away, having turned ~11 years old this year.
I remain skeptical that "bigger is better" in the hard drive world. Before they advertise size and speed, give me a hard drive with vastly improved quality and longevity, and *then* I'll become interested.
Is the size of the drive starting to be like the megahertz myth? I mean, aren't two 200GB drives faster/better than one 400GB in any application where the physicial size is not a limitation (laptop/blade)? Lets say you were editing digital video and then saving the stream in real time. Seems simultaneous read/write ability would be huge. Large drives become even less significant in non physician size limited applications when you can view two devices as one partition.
For desktop use, there are so many open drive bays in a PC that I think I prefer two drives to one monster.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
SmartRipper has an option under settings for file splitting. Set it to max file size and then make sure the max file size is larger than that movie. This will get you a single VOB file. Any DVD playing software should be able to read these (I use powerDVD and it can play ripped VOB's perfectly)
East Coast Brewers
There can be some issues with the bigger drives. I just got a 200 Gig hard drive and it turns out that the default Debian installer won't work on it. Apparently kernels before 2.4.19 can't recognize drives bigger than 137 gigs. (Not this drive anyway). I had to install Debian through Knoppix. Even Windows XP won't recognize it unless you've got SP1.
My God, it's full of pr0n.
Queens of the Stone Age - they rule
No, that's ~370 GiB, or 400 GB :-)
Remember, Giga meant 10^9 a long, long time before computers came along and tried to redefine it as 2^30. Giga was just a handy phrase, it's only through misuse that it came to be thought of as 2^30.
I waffled on this a lot myself, but now I think the SI people are right.
You can read here to find out about RAID levels 2 thru 4 (they aren't used much because RAID 5 is superior). RAID 10 is a combination of striping (RAID 0) and mirroring (RAID 1). Because of the mirroring, RAID 10 can lose a disk without losing data. You'll also find mentions of RAID 50, 51, and 15. These are combinations of RAID 5 with striping or mirroring. It is left as an exercise to the reader to determine disk independence.
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
I find it gets repetitive after a few hours - why store a whole month of it? I mean, you can only see a commercial for "The Tongue" so many times before you want to rip out your actual tongue...
Freedom: "I won't!"
to its integrated LCD. Also, all notebook LCDs are 'hampered' by an 18-bit color limitation. Tech tricks and better manufacturing help mask the noticability of the panel's reduced color output, but it is a well-known 'secret' of the industry.
Dell's new XPS notebook offers a DVI output, and methinks Apple has offered DVI out on their powerbooks for a while now. However, neither uses a digital connection, internally, to the notebook's display.
Como? Cuando? Que?
... Bill Gates's prediction from waaaay back in 1981. Wow, he really is a visionary. Erm ... wait ... what's the difference between kb and gb again? It's not much, is it?
One of the most interesting feature of the disk, is the Auto-Spin disabler jumper. When using proper IDE RAID controllers (namely 3ware), the Auto-Spin disabler can be used to slowly spin up a large array of disks without blowing up your PSU.
just remember, Hitachi bought IBM's failed hard drive division, and subsequentially, new Hitachi drives are based on the designs and technologies acquired from IBM. Unfortunately, I'm not crazy or have the guts to play russian roulette with 6 live rounds in a sixshooter (as oppose to the customary single bullet) with my data. I've lost alot already. All 9 IBM 75GXP's I've purchased have died and several 120GXP's that my friends got, against my strongest opposition, have dead also.
What ticks me off the most was that IBM's tech support denied and denied and I got stuck with dead drives that were at the time under warranty.
Although, I would like to see some hardware review site put the Hitachi drives under MASSIVE long-term stress tests (not just one drive but several 10s of 'em or so).
For Hitachi, it's a major uphill battle. They'll have to somehow prove their worthiness again. For one, maybe they shouldn't use the name "Deskstar" as it is synonymous to "Deathstar." Distancing themselves from IBM's flaws would be best for them. It's like how auto-makers make a sub-brand of themselves to distant themselves from the typical stereotypes and so they can sell for more and look classy too (Lexus, Acura, Infiniti, etc.).
400GB will store over 33 hours of DV quality footage. This is a good thing. Time spent on managing and planning disk space is time not spent on editing or various time wasters.
However on hte low end, my home, this won't happen for awhile. What I want to know is when and if these drives will force the price of 200GB drives down? I mroe space, dangit! Truly high end systems won't touch this drive, but a lot of work gets done on less than first line equipment. This could be useful in a few years to uss low class FCP flunkies.
The thing is, old RAID cards will be useless with these monsters. The cheapest card, for a G4 anyway, that will handle simple RAID for these large disks costs about $100. Not a small cost to be neglected.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.