Drive Plays Well In Enterprise

Even though SATA is the hard drive technology of choice for most system builders, vendors often don't provide an equal number of choices between enterprise- and desktop-class hard drives. To streamline hardware configurations, system builders end up using the same SATA drives in enterprise servers and corporate desktops. That is, if they choose not to use SAS.

Hitachi is reacting to market interest in robust SATA drives with the release of the Ultrastar A7K1000 1-Tbyte hard drive. Hitachi's 1-Tbyte Ultrastar is similar in specifications to the corporate desktop Desktar 7K1000 SATA drive.

Like all SATA drives, the A7K1000 has an access speed of 3 Gbps. The drive can access data at 300 MBps with its burst data rate. The A7K1000 is capable of performing at the same rate even on multidrive systems. The Ultrastar drives come with the same physical connectors as SAS drives, so system builders can place the Ultrastar in mixed drive systems.

The drive works well in RAID array configurations, near-line and tiered storage appliances, disk-to-disk backups and NAS appliances. The drive is 3.5 inches in size and runs at 7,200 RPMs. Hitachi has kept five platters in the drives to reduce stress during high levels of I/O operations.

Two important enterprise features that come with the drive are a rotational vibration safeguard and an unload ramp that protects data when power is removed. The drive also has a throttling protection system that keeps track of I/O to maximize data transfer reliability.

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