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Hitachi to Release Half TB Drive Soon

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the thats-a-whole-lotta-nekkid dept.

samdu writes "Hitachi has announced plans to release a 7200 RPM 3.5 inch 500 GB hard drive in the first quarter of this year." Maybe this one won't require a new motherboard to use. I think I've replaced more mobo's to handle larger drives than I have to support faster CPUs.

6 of 607 comments (clear)

  1. Well what an interesting article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sorry but I can't think of a single interesting thing to say about the launch of a new hard-drive whose only claim to fame is it being a bit bigger than the previous biggest.

    So... anyone got anything interesting to say?

    1. Re:Well what an interesting article by dsginter · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So... anyone got anything interesting to say?

      Seriously... isn't this a wonderful industry?

      If you answered "no" to the above question, please exit stage left. Thanks for playing.

      I don't consider myself "old", but my first PC was an XT with *dual* 5.25" floppy drives (that required a soldering iron for overclocking when there was no such word as "overclocking"). My second PC was a 386SX with an 80 megabyte hard drive.

      As much as I knew it would happen (just looking at the graphs in Byte Magazine was enough to see that), it is still amazing to me. I'm just happy to be working in such a dynamic industry.

      Enough nostalgia for now...

      --
      More
  2. use for backup by feenberg · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Am I the only one who likes 5400rmp drives because he thinks they will last 72/54 times as long as 7200 rpm drives? We use large drives for backup, and since the access is all sequential, the high rotation speed isn't that important to us.

  3. How many movies, MP3s can one possibly use? by aquarian · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I wonder what everyone's doing with all these huge drives, other than indulging a compulsive collecting habit. How much music can one listen to, and how many movies can one possibly watch?

    1. Re:How many movies, MP3s can one possibly use? by Sheetrock · · Score: 4, Insightful

      One potential non-infringing widespread use: this would be a reasonable size for a HDTV PVR unit.

      --

      Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
      -- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.




  4. Re:I've got a rant.. laptops hard drives by Riddlefox · · Score: 3, Insightful
    3.5" hard drives often have four platters on which to store data. 2.5" hard drives usually only have one or two. In addition, the 2.5" hard drive platters are (obviously) physically much smaller than the 3.5" hard drive platters. For a given data density, not only do you have half the number of platters, you have much less surface area.

    As far as transfer performance, you can transfer the most data where the platter is spinning the fastest - on the outer edge. The 3.5" hard drives' edge spins that much faster than the edge of a 2.5" hard drive, so it's easier to get higher data rates.

    Spinning the hard drives faster and faster also builds up much more heat, and consumes more energy than slower drives. Laptops have a harder time coping with heat (it's not like you can just keep adding fans to the chassis), and battery lives are already short enough.

    There is also a lack of SATA interfaces for laptops. I don't know why this is, but you are faced with a chicken/egg situation - do you build SATA 2.5" drives if there is no connector for it? Do you build connectors for a hard drive that doesn't exist?

    SATA 2.5" drives are supposed to come out sometime early this year. We'll see.