Hitachi Global Storage Technologies announced availability of two new 15,000 RPM Ultrastar hard drives for Tier 0/1, mission-critical, enterprise storage applications. The new drives include the Ultrastar C15K147, Hitachis first 15,000 RPM, 2.5-inch 6Gb/s Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) hard drive, and the new 600GB Ultrastar 15K600, the companys fourth generation 3.5-inch drive with either 6Gb/s SAS or 4Gb/s Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FCAL) interfaces. To help enterprises protect sensitive data and comply with privacy and data protection regulations, Hitachi now offers industry-compliant, self-encrypting, enterprise-class hard drives as an option across all of its 10,000 and 15,000 RPM Ultrastar drives.

Delivering performance and capacity in one streamlined package, the 600GB Ultrastar 15K600 offers the highest capacity in a 15,000 RPM 3.5-inch form factor, which gives it 33 percent more storage space when compared to its predecessor. Offered in a 6Gb/s SAS or 4Gb/s FCAL interface, the Ultrastar 15K600 provides the reliability and performance required for I/O-intensive applicationssuch as business processing, decision support, online transaction processing and multi-user applications. With continued sequential performance improvements from generation to generation, the Ultrastar is 23 percent faster than its predecessor. It also features the industrys largest cache buffer at 64MB. The Ultrastar 15K600 family is available in 300GB, 450GB and 600GB capacities.

Licensed to speed in small spaces, the new 2.5-inch Ultrastar C15K147 delivers 70 percent more space efficiency compared to standard 3.5-inch enterprise hard drives, allowing system integrators and OEMs to pack more high performance drives into compact servers for space-constrained data centers. By combining a small 2.5-inch form factor with the performance that only a 15,000 RPM drive can offer, the Ultrastar C15K147 delivers an 11 percent higher sequential performance, and a 23 percent faster seek time when compared to its 10,000 RPM cousin. And because the drive uses Hitachis patented Advanced Power Management technology, the Ultrastar C15K147 uses 50 percent less power than similar 3.5-inch Hitachi drives. The Ultrastar C15K147 is available in 73GB and 147GB capacities and features a 64MB cache buffer.

The Ultrastar C15K147 and 15K600 drives are now shipping into the channel and include a five-year warranty.