HGST introduces CinemaStar hard drive family

HGST, formerly known as Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and now a division of Western Digital, announced it had started using 500 GB 2.5-inch hard drive platters in its products.

The new platters will appear first in the new CinemaStar hard disk drive generation that will have the honor of providing 500 GB of storage capacity in a 7 mm thin chassis with the 1 TB capacity reserved for 9.5 mm thin drives of the same family.

“The ever increasing appetite for on-demand entertainment is driving the adoption of high-capacity 2.5″ hard disk drives into a growing number of CE applications. Not only is there a desire to increase the storage capacity in these devices to hold more programs, but they must deliver predictable A/V streaming performance,” said Brendan Collins, vice president of product marketing at HGST.

HGST hard drive

The new CinemaStar hard drive family targets high-definition multi-stream DVRs, tuner-based STBs as well as IPTV set-top boxes, DVR-enabled TVs, audio systems and video surveillance systems and consists of the following models:

  • CinemaStar C5K1000 – this drive features a 9.5 mm chassis, two platters, SATA 3.0 interface, 5400 rpm of spindle speed, 8 MB cache and capacities of 640 GB, 750 GB and 1000 GB. HGST claims the drive uses just 1.5 watts of power, 5.5 ms average latency, 15 ms typical seek time and 124.75 MB/sec of media transfer rate.
  • CinemaStar Z5K500 – 7 mm chassis, 5400 rpm spindle speed, one platter, 8 MB cache and SATA 2.0 interface with capacities of 250 GB, 320 GB and 500 GB. HTST says the drive consumes 1.5 watts of power and has 5.5 ms average latency, 15 ms typical seek time and 125.5 MB/sec of media transfer rate.
  • CinemaStar Z7K500 – featuring just one platter this model comes in a 7 mm chassis and features 7200 rpm spindle speed, 32 MB cache, SATA 3.0 interface and capacities of 250 GB, 320 GB and 500 GB. The drive also sports 1.7 watts of power consumption, 4.2 ms of average latency, 15 ms typical seek time and 174.5 MB/sec media transfer rate.

All CinemaStar drives feature HGST’s patented SmoothStream technology, which supports the industry-standard ATA‑7 streaming command set, and SMART command transport (SCT) that provide time-limited error recovery and thermal monitoring capabilities for a longer system life. Together, the SCT protocol and HGST SmoothStream technology minimize disruptions in stream delivery by adapting buffer management behavior and error recovery timing to match the characteristics of typical streaming applications.

“With our broad new family of 2.5″ CinemaStar drives, we continue to give our customers the flexibility to select a variety of reliable and robust drives to meet their cost, performance, power or capacity requirements, while helping them to deliver smaller, more aesthetically appealing designs,” added Mr. Collins.

The new CinemaStar family is now available although in limited quantities.


Source: Xbit-Labs.com