t e c h i e - t a l k s ::: technology at its best

Hitachi has announced that they will be releasing “green hard disk drives” (GHDD) this quarter that boast 40% less power utilization. These Hitachi GHDD will see similar specifications to those available in the market now. They will be spinning not at the almost “defacto” 10k rpm, but instead, it will remain at 7200rpm. These GHDD will come in all sizes ranging from 250GB to 500GB. The prices of these GHDD will also remain similar to current hard disk prices.

Although operating at 7 watts, these 3.5″ GHDD are able to idle at 40% less power, thus making it more efficient than any HDD today. In order to achieve the lower power Hitachi has adopted a more advanced System On Chip (SoC) design. The new interface results in greater efficiencies in power consumption and performance. Hitachi has also invested in a comprehensive software approach to hardware operations. This means the SoC is programmed with logic enabling load-unload technology, for example, which unloads the heads when the drive is off (powers the heads down). This enables an 11% to 15% power savings over existing models. In addition, the drive can be throttled down to 5400rpm with a whopping 44% to 52% power saving ability. The drive can then be spun back up under heavy use. With the addition of cache buffers, casual users would likely never see any performance degradation. No word on how quickly these power-down features engage or what threshholds are required to disengage them.

Hitachi plans to implement their green technology model into all of their drives eventually. Johnson said there will be no performance degradation compared to current non-green drives. In fact, she indicated performance may even be slightly better due to the advanced SoC. Hitachi plans to release the green drives this quarter. The P7K500 has a suggested retail price of USD$160, which is comparable to their current 500 GB deskstar product, the T7K500, which is selling online for about USD$130 on average.