Slashdot Mirror


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."

36 of 476 comments (clear)

  1. deskstar by AnimeEd · · Score: 5, Funny

    that's a big deathstar

    1. Re:deskstar by phrasebook · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Oh boo hoo. I got hit by a bad IBM drive (75GXP) 'deathstar' but I don't think I'd mind getting a new Hitatchi, even if it is still an IBM design. Got a 'travelstar' in my laptop that's been going fine for ages. So there was a bad lot a while back, get over it.

    2. Re:deskstar by eclectro · · Score: 5, Informative


      Because of the "deathstar problem" they are outsourcing inspection and final testing of the drives to a different company now.

      --
      Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
    3. Re:deskstar by Lord+Prox · · Score: 5, Funny

      Because of the "deathstar problem" they are outsourcing inspection and final testing of the drives to a different company now.
      I found that with my IBM drives if I keep the temp down (fan/vent/air flow/whatever) they were a lot more stable.

      As for the capacity of this thing, think of it in other terms... 27.75 days of Spice Channel in VCD format.

      I hereby propose a new measurement standard...
      We have Volkswagens for mass
      foolball fields for distance
      and VCD Days for storage.

  2. Good for RAIDs by farnz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Good for RAIDs by fake_name · · Score: 5, Informative

      The "I" in RAID stands for "inexpensive". Part of the idea behind RAID is you can create a 400GB "drive" using 4 100 GB drives, which should work out cheaper. (ignoring the cost of the RAID controller...)

    2. Re:Good for RAIDs by fake_name · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ...except that the disks aren't independent. The whole point of RAID is that the disks are closly dependednt on each other.

      Hooray for marketing!

    3. Re:Good for RAIDs by KingJoshi · · Score: 4, Funny
      which should work out cheaper. (ignoring the cost of the RAID controller...)

      I probably shouldn't reply again to the same post, but how can you talk about the cost of something for comparison and leave out a main component? "This is cheaper if you don't include taxes and shipping and other hidden costs." That's just ridiculous.

      Reminds me of my mom asking me to drive her to a store an hour away so she can save 39 cents on some groceries. Yeah, it's cheaper if you don't include the costs for gas and my time!

      sorry about the rant, but mothers can be so stubborn...

      PS: no I don't live in the basement. I live on a college campus. I do return to live my parents this summer though. And I'm unemployed. And I don't have a girlfriend. Oh damn, I'm a typical Slashdotter :(

      --
      In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
    4. Re:Good for RAIDs by divide+overflow · · Score: 5, Informative

      >>The "I" in RAID stands for "inexpensive".

      >Umm, no, it doesn't. It stands for "Independent".


      I believe you are BOTH right. As I recall, the "I" in RAID *originally* stood for "inexpensive" back in the days when the rapidly dropping price of 5.25" and 3.5" drives were making them very attractive "inexpensive" replacements for larger, *very* expensive mass storage systems. But time passed and the success of RAID arrays made them the primary method for providing high performance data storage and retrival as well as data redundancy. They became the new standard for comparison, so the term "inexpensive" was no longer relevant and was replaced with the word "independent," a term that better describes them. As I was typing this I found this link that seems to agree with my recollection.

    5. Re:Good for RAIDs by NNKK · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, "Independant" is just plain wrong, as is FOLDOC, and I'm sick of having to point it out just because some people can't stand to be corrected.

      First of all, "Inexpensive" still applies and then some. It's much, much cheaper to assemble an array of disks adding up to more than a few hundred GB than to try building a single drive.

      Secondly, there is nothing "independant" about the disks in a RAID. The closest you come is in straight mirroring configurations (which are highly unusual for an array of any significant size), and they still don't operate independantly.

    6. Re:Good for RAIDs by cdrudge · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You are correct that it may not be inexpensive compaired to that 80 GB drive you bought last week at OfficeDepot for 19.99 A/R, it's still cheaper to put a couple these in an array and have 2TB then to go out and find a single 2TB drive. Inexpensive is a relative term to what you are compairing it to.

  3. Technical Details by nacturation · · Score: 5, Funny

    Here's the secret scoop on how they did it.

    --
    Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
  4. They should sell them in pairs by frs_rbl · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:They should sell them in pairs by Endareth · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is very true... Just been through the backup/reinstall process on my home pc, and had to backup my 120 GB drive. Considered borrowing a 40 GB DLT tape drive from a friend, but the time and cost of tapes was too steep. Ended up storing it all on smaller drives and across the network. Took way too long either way. Next time I do this I'm just going to buy another HDD of equal size...

      --
      Disclaimer: The above comment was made while under the influence of too much coding and not enough sleep.
  5. damn and just as free music is under atack by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  6. Re:ATA-100 only ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, ata 133 is a scam.
    A standard 7200 RPM drive generally maxes at a little over 66MB/s (ATA100s just barly needed) (and cause its parallel, it can't share bandwidth).
    Note that WD and seagate don't use it.
    The hype about SATA is not 150MB/s, but that its serial and doesn't ahve any master/slave nonsense

  7. 5 platters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:5 platters by MarcQuadra · · Score: 4, Interesting

      True. That's my 'trick' to reliability. I usually purchase the lowest-model of the newest family of drives. I recently had to replace a laptop drive, so I hit the spec sheets and found the Hitachi Travelstar 5k80, a 5400RPM 80GB drive, but the 80GB model has 2 platters, they have a 40GB model with one. It works like a dream, and I have half the number of heads to crash.

      Another trick I use is to buy from a manufacturer that had problems the year BEFORE. I'm buying IBM/Hitachi exclusively, because the bad PR from years ago is still pushing their QA to high levels. The Deskstar 180GXP is an awesome drive, I've installed over ten of them for people and not one failure yet.

      --
      "Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
  8. I guess now we know.. by Channard · · Score: 4, Funny

    .. 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.

  9. Fabulous! by pla · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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. ;-)

  10. Re:ATA-100 only ? by pantherace · · Score: 4, Interesting
    You do realize that ATA-133 has essentially 0 advantage over ATA-100 don't you. A 7200 rpm drive might make 40-45 MB/sec tops, and doubling that for a 15k rpm (though the highest I have seen for IDE or SATA is 10k) still less than the 100MB provided by ATA-100 & honestly is anyone going to be using a 15k new drive and not be using scsi or sata?

    According to the specs it is a 7200rpm which will not benefit from ATA-133 over ATA-100

  11. Those are the pre-Microsoft numbers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "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"

  12. Old by muffen · · Score: 4, Funny

    Well, if you buy one of these, dont forget to double the space and increase the speed!

  13. Specs out of whack by adrian_hon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:Specs out of whack by Bob+of+Dole · · Score: 5, Funny
      And what kind of bitrate are they using for a 4 minute MP3 recording to take up 40MB?
      C:\> ren *.wav *.mp3
  14. Top 5 uses for a 400GB HD by amigoro · · Score: 5, Funny
    1. 20 DVDs
    2. 100,000 MP3s
    3. 25 million Natalie Portman N&P pics
    4. 1 Billion spam messages
    5. Grab www.archive.com
    --


    Nothing to see here
  15. Will we ever have enough storage by 91degrees · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Will we ever have enough storage by technix4beos · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I know exactly what you mean.

      I'm not that old (only 31), but I've been using computers since 1982, and on a serious, regular basis since 1990. Along the way I've noticed the "price factor" has always remained relatively the same, in regards to hard drives, and total system breakpoint sales prices.

      Back in 1988 I was lucky to play with a laptop that had a whopping 20megs in it, and 4mb of ram. I thought I was in heaven. Then I got my own computer a few years later that had a 500mb drive.

      I never thought I could fill that much space, considering that at the time the largest filesize I was playing with were zipfiles downloaded via bbs latenite that were half a meg or so. I remember one nite downloading a new version of Remote BBS, and knowing it would take only 45 minutes on dialup (2400 baud modem, fast! :) I went to the store, went for a walk, etc.

      And I thought that was FAST. Did I mention speedy? 1K every 4 seconds... Couldn't believe it.

      What does this have to do with hard drive spaces? Well... I'll get to that.

      A few years pass. I'm finally playing with a pentium and upgrade to a whopping 3 gigs! This was -just- before the time when mp3 was hitting the scene on this "new" web thing... I wish I knew how powerful the concepts were then, as I know now, but I digress... hindsight is perfect, and all that.

      So, before napster came out, it was the thing to search personal webpages for mp3, and whoa! download them straight from the website...

      There wasn't any real traffic issues in the day. Everyone was using fast 14.4k or if you were lucky bleeding-edge 28.8k modems, but the webservers were on T1's, and could easily handle the hundred thousand or so people actively getting mp3. It was a strange time. Exhilirating and always full of "what should we look for today" events while combing this new territory.

      The growth of the internet and the growth of hard disk capacity have been in lockstep since the early nineties, I'd dare say that they each are compelling the other, but that's a story for another time.

      So Napster hits the scene. People go apeshit and download/upload like crazy. Time to upgrade that hard drive to a whopping 8 GIGS! Get two of em'. And I still didn't think I would ever fill that much space inside of a year. Oh, how naive we are... ;)

      Now its about 1998 or so... Hard drive capacity is exceeding 10 gigs for the new drives, and steadily every month some new announcement comes out that pushes the standards. By this point I was ripping CD's from friends, from the library, from business associates, and having a great time all the while.

      Divx movies? Not yet.. we'll get to that.

      By the end of 1998 I had gone from perhaps 2 gigs of mp3 (when I first started seriously collecting via dialup) to over 50.

      Again, the needs, requirements, passions, desires, consequences and usage of hard drives were changing upwards all the while. Hard drive manufacturers knew what was really pushing their sales, and they worked that much harder to fill the "need for space".

      Divx movies. By this time I was downloading 2 movies a day, easily, via napster and my friends on BeShare. Getting a whopping 100k/sec in 1999 ROCKED, and I had amassed over 300 GIGS of just media (mp3 and movies only) within six months on disc.

      No, I didn't store all of it on hard drive. I was a frequent purchaser of CDR at the local office supplies store, and got very good discounts. ;) People would ask/wonder what I was doing buying 50 CDR at a time, each and every week almost... I would just smile and say, "backups".

      Its amazing. I don't see an immediate end to the cycle yet. As for violations of the MPAA/RIAA... Fuck 'em. They're a monopoly, they don't deserve any money for the next 1000 years, and should wake up to the open nature of the internet. I feel absolutely no shame for collecting, burning, sharing, distributing and using thousands of GIGS worth of data over my short c

      --
      user@host$ diff /dev/urandom /dev/uspto
  16. power consumption SATA vs. PATA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting
    9.0 watt idle power (Parallel ATA)
    9.6 watt idle power (Serial ATA)
    Interesting that SATA power consumption is slightly higher than PATA. My naive assumption was that fewer wires would yield marginally lower power consumption. Might this hold back adoption in laptops and other battery-backed devices?
  17. Re:How big is it? by eclectro · · Score: 5, Funny


    Well, if every clown represented one GB, it would roughly take one hour for all the clowns to get out of the volkswagon (9 sec per clown).

    --
    Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
  18. Don't worry.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ..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.

  19. Re:What for? by NanoGator · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "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. "

    Well I imagine I'm in the minority here, but I'm a 3D artist rendering animations on my machine. My 120 gig drive's starting to get full of lightly compressed (.png) images and mesh files etc. I can work within the 120 gig by doing backups etc, but a 400gb drive is definitely tempting.

    So what about average Joes? DV video anybody? $500 buys you a DV camcorder. Just plug it into your firewire port and you've got 13 gigs an hour chugging along into it. Somebody who takes lots of vids of their kids would want lots and lots of gigs so they don't have to recompress. Etc.

    I should point out, though, that there is a huge difference between needing the storage and being able to use it.

    --
    "Derp de derp."
  20. Why some people actually prefer to use a laptop by blorg · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Hum. What do you use your laptop for, exactly? Personally I couldn't stand using a laptop all the time. I find a desktop is better ergonomically...

    '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.

  21. Hard drive death by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  22. how to use all that space? someone has to say it. by Gorphrim · · Score: 4, Funny

    My God, it's full of pr0n.

    --

    Queens of the Stone Age - they rule
  23. Re:Drives 137 gigs by EnglishDude · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Also apparently you need an ATA133 controller to see more than 137 GB - I had that problem when I put in a 200GB drive into a co-worker's computer, the BIOS would only see the first 137GB, so I had to get him to buy an ATA133 controller to see the rest of the 200GB. Just as well, he wanted those upgrades as he's a filmmaker, and ATA133 would help a little over ATA66 the computer has.