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Hitachi's latest small form factor drive has up to 1TB capacity

The Ultrastar 15K300 is a 15,000 rpm, 300 GB capacity drive designed for use in Tier 1, business-critical storage environments. It boasts Ultra320 SCSI, 3Gbit/sec. Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and 4Gbit/sec. Fibre Channel interfaces.

The Ultrastar A7K1000 is a small form factor drive that runs at 7,200 rpm and has as much as 1TB of capacity. It has a 3Gbit/sec. Serial ATA interface and is intended for use in high-capacity but relatively inexpensive Tier 2 and 3 storage environments.

According to research firm IDC, disk drive shipments are expected to grow from 2.4 million in 2006 to 9.4 million this year as manufacturers transition to small form factor drives. These drives are denser than 3.5 in. drives, which means more of them can exist in a single server and use less power. The drives use the SAS interface, which gives them at least 3Gbit/sec. data transfer rates.

The third new Hitachi product, the Ultrastar C10K147, is a 10,000 rpm, 147GB drive intended for use in servers.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies was created in 2003 when IBM and Hitachi merged their disk drive businesses. Most storage system manufacturers, such as IBM and EMC Corp., OEM drives from either Hitachi, Seagate LLC or Fujitsu. The drives are expected to be available this quarter.