Hitachi releases single-platter 1TB drives

Hitachi have released two new 3.5″ hard drives with a single 1TB platter capacity. The 7K1000.D and 5K1000.B drives come in 250GB, 320GB, 500GB and 1TB capacities all on a single platter. Due to the reduced number of platters there is less heat, power consumption and a reduced risk of mechanical failure because of less moving parts.

The 7K1000.D version spins at 7200RPM on the SATA III interface and supports a transfer speed of up to 227MB/s. While the 5K1000.B versions spins at 5400RPM on the SATA III interface supporting transfer speeds of up to 180MB/s. Both drives come with 32MB of cache and according to Hitachi the green drive uses 23% less power than the 7K1000.D variant of the same platter. Hitachi also claims their “HiVert” technology reduces idle power consumption by up to 15%.

This official release makes Hitachi the first company to produce a single 1TB platter drive out of the entire market which is hardly breaking news but it is nice to know hard drive technology is still moving forward and bringing larger capacities with lower power consumption.